President Trump’s visa policy thwarts China’s spy network on college campuses – and in Congress

A suspected communist Chinese spy got so close to Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell in 2015 that the FBI had to step in to shut down the threat.

The Chinese communist agent was a fundraising "bundler" for Swalwell’s congressional re-election, had volunteered for numerous Democratic campaigns and facilitated intern assignments in Swalwell’s office. 

And it all started with a student visa to a California university. 

The Fang Fang case exemplifies a disturbing pattern: Chinese communist spies gaining entry and access to policymakers through seemingly innocuous student visas to U.S. colleges and universities. 

IS TRUMP RESCUING CHINA'S COMMUNISTS?

It's a stark reminder of the urgent need for President Donald Trump's strong and decisive action to aggressively revoke visas of students linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

"Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields," Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday. "We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong." 

The new visa policy is long overdue. Beijing thinks in centuries, patiently deploying operatives as students for a payoff years later. In July 2020, FBI Director Chris Wray warned, "China – the Chinese Communist Party – believes it is in a generational fight to surpass our country in economic and technological leadership."

The Swalwell spy affair isn't an isolated incident. "She was just one of lots of agents," a senior U.S. intelligence official said when news of the Swalwell case broke. At that time, the FBI maintained roughly 2,500 active FBI counterintelligence cases related to China.

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Chinese communist espionage starts on college campuses, where connections are formed with aspiring political leaders. Fang Fang's path, according to the FBI, was a textbook example: enrollment at California State University, East Bay, followed by active participation in student political organizations, even leading campus chapters of the Chinese Student Association and the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs. 

Chinese Embassy and consulate officials have helped facilitate 124 chapters of Chinese students and scholars associations. It’s through those very campus organizations that the Chinese spy first made contact with Swalwell and other Democratic politicians.  

"CSSAs often attempt to conceal or obscure their ties to the Chinese government, frequently omitting incriminating language from the English-language versions of their websites—the ones typically reviewed by university administrators," the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission concluded in 2018.

In addition to student associations, China has established joint-venture education programs and institutions in the United States. For years, China built an extensive network of Confucius Institutes on college and university campuses in the United States. 

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Marketed as language learning and cultural programs, the Confucius Institutes acted as a vehicle for Chinese government influence in the United States. Confucius Institute staff were forced to pledge loyalty to protect Chinese national interests. 

After Congress restricted federal funding to schools with institutes, the institutes have almost all closed, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Closed but the espionage continues. 

Earlier this month, a bombshell report out of Stanford University exposed a sophisticated CCP intelligence operation targeting Stanford students, particularly those in sensitive fields like AI and robotics. 

U.S. colleges and universities aren’t just a "soft target" for Chinese Communist espionage. They are, in many cases, compromised institutions. 

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As of February 2025, U.S. colleges and universities reported more than $4 billion in foreign funding from China. That’s only the disclosed money. Over the past decade, as much as $60 billion in foreign funds have been funneled into American colleges and universities. 

In 2023, I served on the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which warned about the CCP gaining access to research at UC Berkeley through its Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute The Biden administration ignored our concerns that the Chinese government could gain access to sensitive economic, technological and military research. 

Thankfully, the Trump administration launched an investigation into UC Berkeley this spring for failing to report $220 million in foreign funds from the Chinese government related to Berkeley’s PRC-backed collaboration with Tsinghua University.  

After four years of willful ignorance – or gross incompetence – under the Biden administration, President Trump has wasted no time in directing his administration to take the decisive, necessary action to finally thwart the pervasive and growing threat of Chinese communist espionage on U.S. college campuses. 

The president’s new visa policy is a critical step in securing America’s national security.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM FORMER REP. MICHELLE STEEL