Harvard hosted members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps after the group was sanctioned for human rights violations.
Senior House GOP lawmakers launched an investigation into indications that Harvard “provided services” to a Chinese Communist Party paramilitary organization sanctioned by the U.S. government for its role in atrocities against Uyghurs.
In a letter to Harvard president Alan Garber on Monday, Representatives John Moolenaar, Tim Walberg, and Elise Stefanik said that Harvard hosted members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps at multiple training conferences — including after the Trump administration sanctioned the group.
In 2020, the Treasury Department designated the corps, known as Bingtuan in Chinese, under Global Magnitsky human rights sanctions authorities, a move that blocks Americans from engaging in transactions with it. A Treasury Department statement announcing the sanctions that year said that the corps was connected to “serious human rights abuse against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.”
Experts on Chinese regime policies in the region told National Review at the time that the corps operates the Chinese region’s notorious mass detention system — the bedrock of a brutal police state. The XPCC operates as a parallel governance structure in Xinjiang, also overseeing agricultural activities and other industries. Later that year, the State Department found that Beijing is carrying out genocide against Uyghurs.
The congressional letter sent Monday said that while Harvard’s relationship with the XPCC began in 2019, that it “provided services to XPCC on multiple occasions after the U.S. Treasury Department listed XPCC” as a sanctioned entity.
“Harvard continued to provide services to XPCC multiple times over the next four years as part of its Harvard China Health Partnership (HCHP), which works closely with the CCP,” the letter continued. The committee’s use of the phrase “provided services” appears to echo the language in the executive order establishing Global Magnitsky sanctions barring Americans from doing that.
The event, called the Flagship Training Event on Health Care Financing, took place in China and is focused on improving the country’s health care system.
Specifically, the lawmakers referred to events hosted by the partnership in 2023 and 2024 that featured the participation of XPCC officials. Following the 2023 conference, Harvard omitted mention of XPCC from its press release about the event, but that statement also included a picture of XPCC participants sitting at a dais, with their name plates blurred out. This, the lawmakers said, “raises questions about why Harvard wanted to keep their identities hidden.”
The Harvard China Health Partnership’s work with the XPCC first came to light in a research brief published by Strategy Risks. The Washington Free Beacon then revealed the XPCC’s participation in the 2024 conference. Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the letter.
Moolenaar and Walberg are the chairmen of the House’s committees on competition with China and education, respectively. Stefanik is the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference.
The lawmakers also wrote that Harvard researchers worked with researchers from Chinese military-linked universities on projects funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They warned that this helps to train those institutions in scientific fields that could have applications in a future military conflict and grant the Chinese government a look at U.S. military research priorities.
Another concern the lawmakers raised is that Harvard researchers collaborated with Chinese military-tied universities on scientific research projects with potential military applications. They found that Harvard researchers “worked with researchers associated with Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University on the ‘first controlled flight of a microrobot powered by soft artificial muscles,’” which they said has “clear potential military applications.”
The lawmakers are also investigating Harvard research with Chinese institutions on organ harvesting, giving the regime’s use of that practice on political prisoners and religious minorities, such as the Falun Gong. They also said that Harvard researchers worked with Chinese researchers to a project funded by an Iranian government-directed foundation.
The letter concluded with a list of documents and communications that they are asking Harvard to provide their offices, relating to the concerns they raised in the letter, by June 2.