American public pension funds have given almost $70 billion to Chinese entities since 2020.
The New York State Common Retirement Fund and the New York State State Teachers’ Retirement System have collectively committed more than $11 billion to Chinese stocks.
The California Public Employees Retirement System has given $7.86 to Chinese stocks, while the California State Teachers System has invested $5.55 billion.
Nonprofit organization Future Union provided the data, finding that 56 out of the 74 largest pension plans have invested in China over the last 36 months.
“In the past 12 months, 24 investments alone have been made, which should be acknowledged as support for the technological advancement of China,” Future Union’s report said, according to the New York Post.
United States schools and universities have also invested more than $7 billion in Chinese organizations.
The greatest investors of Chinese stocks among U.S. universities are the University of Texas System, with $1.6 billion invested in Chinese entities, the University of Michigan, having invested $1.56 billion, and the University of California Board of Regents, with $1.55 billion invested in China.
Ivy League universities have also given billions to Chinese groups.
Princeton has invested $155 million, Stanford has contributed at least $80 million to Chinese companies, Yale has given at least $50 million, with MIT, Duke, and Carnegie Million collectively investing at least $52 million.
The investments raise national security concerns.
“The threat posed by China to America’s national security is clear yet the managers of our retirees’ pensions and university endowments continue to feign ignorance and rue accountability, undermining America’s national interests,” said Future Union executive director Andrew King.
China also has connections to K-12 schools.
Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, stated that China’s infiltration into American K-12 schools is “almost everywhere.”
The scholar argued that China’s influence could be seen most often in schools that “feed” into elite colleges and universities.
“That is, in every state that we’ve looked at, we have found instances of it, but I would say it’s concentrated in the feeder schools to elite education, which means mostly West Coast and East Coast, but not exclusively those,” Wood said.
