Greg Murphy: Chinese Effort to Undermine American Universities ‘Has to Stop’

Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) joined SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight on Tuesday and discussed his legislation that was released Wednesday to address the “major problem” of Chinese efforts to undermine American universities and academia.

“In the world today, the Chinese are playing their cards very, very well,” Murphy told host Matthew Boyle. “The United States, we’re dealing with COVID as a horrible pandemic, we’re dealing with a lot of the strides and race relations, the chaos and the anarchy in the city. It’s just a fertile ground for the Chinese to continue their efforts of espionage, and thievery, and stealth against this country.”

“Now we’ve found that really, one of the biggest methods, if not the biggest method, is them being able to scale our technology and medicine,” Murphy said. “You know, they’ve been trying to break into our work on vaccines. It’s through the American university, academia. It’s very interesting that over thirty percent of foreign students in our universities are Chinese nationals. This isn’t going to be painted as we are against the Chinese people, not by any means, but there are a large number of individuals who are members of the People’s Liberation Army. In fact, four were just charged a couple of weeks ago of trying to get in with visas who were part of the PLA. What we’re finding is that we’re losing so much technology under the guise of academic research and academic freedom that’s being sent right back to China. It’s time to get ahold on this thievery.”

Murphy continued his emphasis on the harsh reality of China’s efforts, saying it is a “major problem.”

“It’s a major problem because univeristies, a lot of them are hurting for money and so why wouldn’t they welcome money that’s being paid in cash in full and sometimes two or three times what it costs to help fill their coffers at universities,” Murphy said. “We have to worry about national security. … So much intellectual property, patents, etc, are stolen by the Chinese, blatantly. This has to stop. This is a national security issue.”

“I know that universities love to talk about the free exchange of ideas of cultures, which is interesting because a lot of them don’t allow the free exchange of ideas between Americans, themselves,” Murphy said. “So many Americans, especially at so many of our colleges and universities are so naive to the fact of what the Chinese are doing.”

Murphy’s full remarks to Breitbart News can be listened to here.