Chinese authorities are strategically placing students at Stanford University and requiring them to report on academic research, student journalists said Tuesday at a Heritage Foundation panel discussion of foreign influence in academia.
The revelation came from an investigation that began when a man, claiming to be a Stanford student, contacted China researchers last summer. Stanford student journalist Elsa Johnson was among those contacted, and with fellow student Garret Molloy, she exposed Chinese Communist Party influence at Stanford in a May bombshell investigative report.
Johnson recalled the suspicious messages. “He was also asking me to come to China without a visa in order to not alert U.S. authorities. He was saying I should go for one to six days and then go to Japan in between. It was so bizarre.”
“I ended up getting in touch with the FBI afterwards, and I was awakened to the fact that this actually happens a lot at Stanford,” Johnson added.
As China accelerates its sophistication in high tech, “Stanford is a prime target” owing to its proximity to California’s Silicon Valley, Molloy said. He added that after conducting interviews with Stanford students and professors, he and Johnson discovered Chinese authorities selected and directed people into specific areas of research.
