The House of Representatives on May 7 passed a bill that would ban the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from providing grants to colleges and universities that partner with the entities of China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
By a vote of 266–153, the chamber passed H.R. 881, “DHS Restrictions on Confucius Institutes and Chinese Entities of Concern Act.” Every Republican present voted for the bipartisan legislation, along with 55 Democrats.
U.S. schools that host Confucius Institutes are already prohibited from receiving Department of Defense funding.
“The [CCP] exploited the open and collaborative nature of American academia to conduct widespread industrial military espionage inside the United States,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said during the House Rules Committee’s discussion of the bill on May 5.
The bill also prohibits colleges and universities from contracting with China’s Thousand Talents Program; with any entity connected to that nation’s military, police, or intelligence agencies; or with its Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
“The institute of higher education may regain eligibility for these funds upon termination of the relationship,” the resolution reads.
The University of Michigan; the University of California, Berkeley; and the Georgia Institute of Technology recently severed their ties with CCP-linked entities.
This proposal has been debated for years. The House passed a version of it in 2024, but Democrats and then-President Joe Biden said that the measure was overly broad and should not disqualify any schools from receiving federal disaster aid, which Homeland Security administers.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who co-wrote the bill, said the new version of the bill includes provisions for technical assistance to help schools comply with the regulations. It also includes a waiver for allowing higher education institutions to partner with Chinese entities in limited circumstances if cooperation “is of national interest,” he said.
The vote comes 10 days after the Department of Education announced that the University of California, Berkeley is under investigation for allegedly not reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from a China-linked entity dating back to 2023 and allegedly sharing information about an “important technology.”
Foxx said that while only a handful of universities are currently partnering with the CCP’s Confucius Institutes, 43 out of 74 schools that were involved with the program in the past are still maintaining relationships with the Chinese peers they met.
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) said protecting U.S. higher education from foreign influence “is a largely settled issue,” and that Republicans are wasting time on this legislation instead of dealing with more pressing issues.
“But if my colleagues want to beat a dead horse to get in some talking points because there’s no legislation of consequence on the floor this week, enjoy yourselves,” she said.
Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) said additional congressional actions such as this bill are needed to protect the United States from espionage and stop China from stealing U.S. trade secrets and intellectual property.
“The Chinese Communist Party does not share our interests or our values,” he said during a May 6 discussion of the measure.
“The Chinese Communist Party is no longer an economic adversary. They are an enemy.”
In April, President Donald Trump, in an executive order, emphasized existing federal regulations that require colleges and universities to report foreign donations of $250,000 or more twice a year. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon accused Biden of “turning a blind eye to universities’ legal obligations.”
