As awareness grows of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence in the United States, a former congresswoman from California is shedding light on the regime’s reach in the state, across the country, and around the world.
Michelle Steel, who served in Congress from 2021 to 2025 and sat on several committees dealing with China-related issues, raised concerns about the CCP’s influence on the U.S. higher education system in a recent interview with EpochTV’s “California Insider.”
“Universities were the worst one. We have a prominent university in California called UC Berkeley … and they received $220 million from China,” Steel said.
Under the Higher Education Act of 1965, universities must report to the Department of Education every six months any foreign gifts or contracts—either individually or combined—valued at $250,000 or more in a calendar year.
Steel alleged the university never reported the money.
The allegations surfaced in 2023 when Education and Workforce Committee chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and then Select Committee on China chairman Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) stated in a letter to University of California–Berkeley officials that the university failed to report investments from the Chinese municipal government—$220 million of which was intended to fund a campus in Shenzhen, China—for the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, a joint research initiative.
Tsinghua University, one of China’s top institutions, is governed by the country’s Ministry of Education.
In exchange for the money it received, the university allegedly provided exclusive tours of advanced semiconductor research facilities to Chinese delegations, including senior Chinese regime officials, according to another letter to the National Science Foundation from House Science, Space, and Technology Committee chairman Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and Research and Technology Subcommittee chairman Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.).
“Allowing adversarial nations to access research facilities at the leading edge of semiconductor design is unacceptable, especially when that access is given by a U.S. research institution that receives over $700 million annually in funds from the Federal government,” the pair said in the letter.
Hellbound and Down 