“You should take a look at the Chinese Student and Scholar Association at university campuses in Michigan,” said a source in the national security apparatus.
“The what?” I replied, completely ignorant of such an organization. Scrambling for information, I spoke with as many sources as humanly possible, all of them stunned and oblivious.
Information on this nationwide college campus group—which has managed to remain mysteriously off the public’s radar for decades—was easy to find.
The Chinese Student and Scholar Association, using the acronym CSSA, is currently up and running on most major university campuses, including the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. The group has .edu emails and official coordination with these institutions.
A non-governmental organization, the CSSA’s funding is a mystery, but links to The Chinese Communist Party have been uncovered in recent years at Ivy league schools and Georgetown University. Additionally, the gravy train of money flowing out of Beijing was revealed at Wayne State University in 2018 when, during an absurd property development scandal, several elected and appointed officials received free trips to China ostensibly paid for by the WSU CSSA, later determined to be a pass-through for the Chinese Consulate in Chicago.
Why is this important now?
After being exposed as “soft power” propaganda and surveillance arms—effectively spy rings—of the People’s Republic of China, the network of Confucius Institutes that rapidly expanded across American higher ed since 2004 have been almost completely driven off university campuses. In 2020 the State Department designated Confucius Institute U.S. Center as a foreign mission under the control of the CCP and cut federal funding for the group. The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act placed further restrictions.
By 2020, 104 of the 118 Confucius Institutes in the U.S. had either closed or were in the process of packing up their shit.
Game over for China. Problem solved, right? Hold on.
According to Jennifer Richmond of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, no such dismantling occurred. Instead, Confucius Institutes just rebranded as CSSAs, but with a far more careful approach.
Richmond’s research indicates the CSSA has an even larger domestic footprint, with over 150 groups currently in operation on American campuses, with some schools in Michigan fully onboard with the new approach.
According to national security sources wishing to remain unnamed, the University of Michigan isn’t just turning a blind eye to the CSSA on their campus but has been cooperating with Chinese concerns linked to the People’s Liberation Army for almost two decades. Michigan’s partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University—a Chinese military research school—was only severed after Chinese nationals enrolled as students at U-M were caught spying on classified military hardware at Camp Grayling as well as attempting to breach security at Selfridge Air Force Guard Base.
The CSSA at Michigan State University has been quiet but appears dug into the school like a tick. With no official websites other than unverified social media pages, the organization is literally operating on the MSU servers with links to contact information—including official .edu emails—and a brief summary of their activities. Seems odd that a shadowy group is using public bandwidth.
So what’s being done about all this? Well, not much at the moment. It’s not just the American public that’s oblivious, but most elected politicians are in the dark as well.
But not all of them. Congressman John James—one of the leading candidates to be Michigan’s next governor—has been watching closely and is banging the drum loudly for legislation and continued action against Chinese communist influence on college campuses.
In 2023, James held the floor at a House Education Committee Hearing to lament the lack of action and point to an uncomfortable truth: American universities are inviting and embracing Chinese Communist influence on their campuses.
Rep. James said: “I will pose this question. Why are we funding both sides of this rivalry? Why are we welcoming the fox into the henhouse? We must do more to untangle from the CCP.”
Amid a slew of legislation aimed at combating CCP influence on campus, Rep. James proposed the Disclose GIFTs Act designed to force college facilities and administrators to fully disclose gifts and contracts from foreign nations in an attempt to circumvent non-disclosure agreements many university employees sign.
In Lansing, several Republican members of the house are up to speed and aware of the looming problem of China’s influence in public instructions. Rep. William Bruck and Rep. Bill G. Schuette have sponsored bills designed to curb foreign influence at state institutions of higher learning and in public bodies such as state and municipal governmental offices.
Additionally, Rep. Nancy Jenkins-Arno sponsored a more expansive bill seeking to regulate and control programs and agreements between public schools and countries deemed national security concerns.
All three Republican-led house bills passed in the House with even some Democrats voting in favor—a bipartisan sign our nation’s security is unifying concern—but those bills currently remain dormant in the Democrat-led State Senate with no sign that Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks has any intention of taking them up for vote.
Why Democrats appear unconcerned is a looming question. Michigan and Michigan State both have large numbers of foreign students, and they want even more because students from overseas, most notably China, pay full-nut tuition as opposed to students from in-state who pay lower tuition rates.
The liberal ideological capture of Michigan and Michigan State would indicate Democrats have a vested interest in both schools exceeding financial goals, increasing both their endowments, and stretching their domestic and global reaches, national security concerns be damned.
But there’s cause for even more concern.
Richmond’s research found evidence of Hong Kong-based holding groups, specifically Primavera, a Chinese-controlled entity operating the Spring Education Group, is currently purchasing influence into K-12 private educational systems and encroaching into the public realm via Tutor.com. Ever expanding, Spring Education Group currently operates in 19 states but has yet to plant a flag in Michigan.
The advantage the Chinese Communist Party has over the American public is our socially engineered ideological blindness. The Cold War ended over three decades ago. For Boomers, the aggressive Spy Game that entranced the nation is but a figment of a memory.
The notion of communist spies from China are embedded into our institutions runs against the new religion of diversity and zealous multiculturalism. Among America’s cultural elites, pointing out nefarious activity on behalf of an ethic minority elicits frowns. Remember the furious calls of racism toward people merely pointing out the commonsense possibility that Covid was intentionally designed in a Wuhan lab?
America has a new Cold War spy thriller unfolding on our college campuses, but our sophisticated sensibilities might be keeping us from fighting.
Jay Murray is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
