Thread by @MsMelChen

🚨BREAKING: To add to Harvard’s ongoing woes, we have uncovered a shocking new detail.

Harvard University may have violated US sanctions by hosting and providing training sessions for a Chinese paramilitary organization (XPCC)

Here's what we found 🧵

Harvard, along with other top US universities, is already facing intense scrutiny over foreign gifts and contracts that raise concerns about undue foreign influence.

Secretary @LindaMcMahonEd has said that Harvard has not been “fully transparent or complete in its disclosures." The Dept. of Education is currently investigating Harvard’s foreign donations.

Since 2012, Harvard has received over $1.1 billion in foreign funding, with significant contributions from China.

These gifts often come with “strings attached” that potentially comprise academic freedom and lead to partnerships that present huge attack areas for espionage, intellectual property theft, and corruption.

In 2014, the Chan family -- well-connected Hong Kong real estate tycoons -- donated $350 million to the Harvard Public Health School, and Harvard renamed the school in their honor.

Gerald Chan called the donation a “gift unsolicited, unrestricted, and unexpected.” This particular gift introduced meaningful vectors of influence from the PRC into Harvard.

We go into great detail about these vectors in our report, here:

strategyrisks.com/press/report-b…

How did it lead to a possible sanctions violation?

In 2018, the Chan School of Public Health formalized partnerships with seven PRC institutions through the Harvard-China Health Partnership (HCHP).

The HCHP trained CCP officials -- including, in 2019 and 2023, officials from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC).

What exactly is the XPCC?

The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC 新疆生产建设兵团) is a state-run paramilitary corporate conglomerate that operates in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

As the regional government, paramilitary organization and state-run corporate enterprise, the XPCC runs prisons, a media empire, the educational system and agricultural projects.

In the last five years in particular, the XPCC has played a critical role in suppressing Uyghur life, culture, and identity through the following means:

- extrajudicial internment and imprisonment
- land expropriation
- forcible migration of people
- repressive, pre-emptive policing
- social engineering
- religious persecution
- forced labor

The U.S. State Department has accused China of “genocide” against Uyghurs, and imposed sanctions on the XPCC in 2020.

In 2022, the U.S. also passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which bans the import of goods linked to forced labor in Xinjiang.

Perhaps Harvard inviting the XPCC in 2019 is excusable.

But Harvard University’s undisclosed ties to XPCC officials as late as October 2023 raises questions about Harvard’s compliance to these US sanctions and complicity with an entity responsible for egregious rights violations in the Uyghur Region.

In a statement to @IsaacStoneFish, Harvard admitted to training the XPCC.

The “goal with these trainings is straightforward,” the spokesperson wrote. “To build capacity for public officials across China to create effective insurance programs with sustainable financial models so that all people across China can get access to high-quality health care.”

If one were to type “decolonize” into the Harvard online course catalog’s search box, one would find that it appears in the titles of 7 courses and the descriptions of 18 more.

“Oppression” and “liberation” are in the descriptions of more than 80 courses. “Social justice” is in >100.

Given its land seizures and function as a military force that suppresses the Uyghurs, the XPCC is by all accounts a repressive, colonial institution.

The irony of course is that this is an elite institution that has spent decades posturing itself as a paragon of progressive values and a stalwart of social justice refusing to reckon with the moral implications of willingly training members of the XPCC, an organization that is antithetical to everything that social justice purportedly stands for.