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Harvard University, that bastion of Ivy League prestige, has been caught with its hand in a very murky cookie jar—quietly training members of a Chinese paramilitary group tied to the Uyghur genocide, even after the U.S. slapped sanctions on it.
[H/T The Washington Free Beacon]
The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) subordinate described by the Trump administration as a “paramilitary organization,” got cozy with Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health not once, but twice post-sanctions, in 2023 and 2024. Now, one expert warns, Harvard could be staring down “a big legal problem.”
Let's hope that expert is correct.
It all started innocently enough—or so Harvard would have you believe.
The Trump administration hit the XPCC with sanctions in 2020 for its role in “serious rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” where China’s been accused of mass detentions, forced sterilizations, and worse.
This isn’t just a PR hiccup. Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Sobolik told the outlet that Harvard’s playing with fire. “It’s one thing to partner with the XPCC before the U.S. government declared a genocide in Xinjiang. It’s another thing entirely to continue that cooperation afterwards,” he said.
Harvard’s already in hot water, with the Trump administration freezing over $2 billion in federal funding for its failure to tackle campus anti-Semitism. Now this? The timing’s brutal, but hey, they deserve it.
When pressed, Stephanie Simon, the Chan School’s dean for communications, pointed the finger at China. “Each year, the NHSA invites the local officials who administer health insurance and elder care programs in each administrative region of China. In Xinjiang, that often includes officials from the XPCC,” she said. The trainings, she claimed, are broad, drawing “50 or 60 local officials from across China, with just one or two from each administrative region.” Instructors? A global mix, not just Harvard folks.
As for that scrubbed 2019 blog post? Simon shrugged it off as part of a website redesign that ditched “an enormous quantity of old content” across the school’s sites “several months ago.” Convenient.
Harvard’s no stranger to Beijing’s orbit. Between 2019 and 2022, it pocketed nearly $70 million from Chinese entities—more than from any other country, per U.S. Department of Education data. The Chan School itself got a $350 million windfall in 2014 from the Morningside Foundation, controlled by the Chan family—Hong Kong tycoons with deep CCP ties. The school was renamed after their late patriarch, though Harvard swears the gift was “unsolicited, unrestricted, and unexpected.”
The university’s China ties run deeper still. Its health partnership includes seven Chinese universities, six flagged by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute as security risks due to their People’s Liberation Army connections. Three—Sichuan, Xi’an Jiaotong, and Tsinghua—are neck-deep in Chinese defense tech, including the nuclear program. Oh, and in 2022 alone, Harvard trained “188 senior national and provincial-level government officials” from China’s NHSA. That’s not a seminar; that’s a pipeline.
Harvard’s response? It’s all about “advancing the school’s mission of improving health and well-being for all,” Simon said. But when you’re training a sanctioned paramilitary outfit linked to genocide, that mission starts looking like a tightrope walk over a legal and moral abyss.
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It all started innocently enough—or so Harvard would have you believe.
Way back in 2019, the Chan School launched an annual health financing course with Beijing’s National Health Security Administration (NHSA), training Chinese government staffers. A blog post at the time proudly noted XPCC officials from Xinjiang were among the inaugural class. But when conservative outlet The Washington Free Beacon came knocking, that tidbit mysteriously vanished from the site, like it never happened.
The Trump administration hit the XPCC with sanctions in 2020 for its role in “serious rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” where China’s been accused of mass detentions, forced sterilizations, and worse.
You’d think that would be a red line for Harvard. Nope.
The university obstinately continued training XPCC officials, first in 2023 (flagged by Strategy Risks in a damning report, “Beijing Exercises Strong Influence Over Multiple Areas of Harvard University”) and again in 2024, a detail buried on the NHSA’s website and unreported until now.
One might think of this as a symbolic flipping of "the bird" to the U.S. government.
This isn’t just a PR hiccup. Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Sobolik told the outlet that Harvard’s playing with fire. “It’s one thing to partner with the XPCC before the U.S. government declared a genocide in Xinjiang. It’s another thing entirely to continue that cooperation afterwards,” he said.
“Harvard officials should have known that training the XPCC risked complicity in Beijing’s atrocities against Uyghurs and other ethno-religious minorities. Either they didn’t, and it’s gross negligence—or they did, and it’s beyond the pale. Either way, Harvard may have a big legal problem.” Sanctions mean U.S. entities can’t engage with the XPCC, and violations could bring hefty fines—hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially.
Harvard’s already in hot water, with the Trump administration freezing over $2 billion in federal funding for its failure to tackle campus anti-Semitism. Now this? The timing’s brutal, but hey, they deserve it.
When pressed, Stephanie Simon, the Chan School’s dean for communications, pointed the finger at China. “Each year, the NHSA invites the local officials who administer health insurance and elder care programs in each administrative region of China. In Xinjiang, that often includes officials from the XPCC,” she said. The trainings, she claimed, are broad, drawing “50 or 60 local officials from across China, with just one or two from each administrative region.” Instructors? A global mix, not just Harvard folks.
Simon insisted the goal is noble: “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.”
As for that scrubbed 2019 blog post? Simon shrugged it off as part of a website redesign that ditched “an enormous quantity of old content” across the school’s sites “several months ago.” Convenient.
Harvard’s no stranger to Beijing’s orbit. Between 2019 and 2022, it pocketed nearly $70 million from Chinese entities—more than from any other country, per U.S. Department of Education data. The Chan School itself got a $350 million windfall in 2014 from the Morningside Foundation, controlled by the Chan family—Hong Kong tycoons with deep CCP ties. The school was renamed after their late patriarch, though Harvard swears the gift was “unsolicited, unrestricted, and unexpected.”
The university’s China ties run deeper still. Its health partnership includes seven Chinese universities, six flagged by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute as security risks due to their People’s Liberation Army connections. Three—Sichuan, Xi’an Jiaotong, and Tsinghua—are neck-deep in Chinese defense tech, including the nuclear program. Oh, and in 2022 alone, Harvard trained “188 senior national and provincial-level government officials” from China’s NHSA. That’s not a seminar; that’s a pipeline.
Harvard’s response? It’s all about “advancing the school’s mission of improving health and well-being for all,” Simon said. But when you’re training a sanctioned paramilitary outfit linked to genocide, that mission starts looking like a tightrope walk over a legal and moral abyss.
If you enjoy my blog, feel free to toss a virtual coffee my way on Buy Me a Coffee – it’s like a high-five with caffeine! No pressure, it's your call.
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