Harvard might be a mere pipe dream for most American college-hunting brainiacs, but for "so many Chinese communist officials" it rates as their top "party school," The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
Not only has Chinese President Xi Jinping's own daughter been a student at Harvard, but a former vice president and Xi's top negotiator with the first Trump administration studied there as leaders in China see Harvard education as a path to Chinese Communist Party positions.
And it is not a new thing.
"If we were to rank the Chinese Communist Party's 'overseas party schools,' the one deserving top spot has to be Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in the U.S.," a 2014 Shanghai Observer online commentary piece read.
President Donald Trump sought to change the paradigm with China during his first administration just months before the COVID-19 pandemic exploded around the world.
Now, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are seeking to curb the stocking of America's chief economic, if not military, rival with the state-of-the-world education, monitoring foreign student visas and putting new ones on hold to establish extreme vetting measures for students flooding to Harvard who might be seeking to work against American interests.
Rubio announced Wednesday the effort to "aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields."
The move has Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning saying Chinese students have the rights of Americans, despite merely being permitted foreign student visa holders, saying Rubio's move "seriously damaged the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese students."
Rubio says foreign visa holders have the privilege, not the right, to be in the U.S.
Trump now wants to cut Harvard's estimated foreign student visa base in half, down to 15% to make sure those attended from foreign rivals like China "are people that can love our country."
"I think Harvard has to get a kick in the rear end," Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax's "Saturday Agenda." "It's not going to do it by itself. The president of Harvard would like to do the right thing, and he's a very decent man.
"But there are too many radical left-wing faculty members that are Marxists and that are antisemites and that are anti-American and anti-Christian and want to see Harvard become the kind of woke institution that turns out the kinds of political leaders that they would like to see dominate the country."
While Harvard is the Chinese Communist Party school of choice, this China education train is not exclusive. It extends to Biden's alma mater at Syracuse University, too.
Syracuse offers executive training for Chinese officials and since the early 2000s its Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs has helped set up programs at Chinese universities.
Harvard's China focus began in the 1980s, but it ramped up under former President Bill Clinton in the late '90s, leading to the "China's Leaders in Development" program to "help prepare senior local and central Chinese government officials to more effectively address the ongoing challenges of China's national reforms," according to the report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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