Anonymous Chinese donations totaling $22 million to the recently opened Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) are raising national security concerns. The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education flagging the donations.
Federal law requires universities disclose the source of any donations over $250,000. According to NLPC, as reported by Newsmax, the largest anonymous donation from China of $14.5 million to the Biden Center came in May 2018. Even more money was donated to UPenn once Biden announced he was running for president in late 2019.
According to NLPC, UPenn received more than $70 million from Chinese sources between 2013 and 2019. Of that amount, about $22 million was identified as coming from anonymous sources in China.
With only a week until the election, the university has refused to identify its anonymous donations and the Department of Education is so far unwilling to force the university to comply. Newsmax reports that NLPC attorney Paul Kamenar questions why the university “isn’t coming clean” on the anonymous donations.
“Why aren’t you releasing this information so we can see who these Chinese sources are and how much money is being funneled to the Biden Center?”
“The University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Biden Center are particularly vulnerable to China government influences due to the large amounts of China donations and contracts,” the complaint argued.
Highlighting the national security dangers, the complaint also referenced the 2020 Penn China Research Symposium held on Jan. 31, just as the Wuhan coronavirus was spreading globally.
The event, “China and the Future of Healthcare and Biotechnology” featured a Penn Biden Center representative and Ambassador Huang Ping, the consul general from New York’s Chinese consulate general (also known as a major Chinese spy hub) as panelists.
Can anyone see a reason that former Vice President Joe Biden would be criticizing President Trump’s announced travel ban from China to combat the spread of COVID in late January just as Chinese officials are speaking at the Biden Center on China, Healthcare and Biotechnology?
