Taxpayer Dollars May Have Funded Education Of CCP Assets, Report Reveals

A public university has been operating an MBA pipeline to roles in China’s state-owned enterprise and government bodies, a recent Strategy Risks report shows.

Missouri State University (MSU) “trained more than 1,500 current and future managers for Chinese state-owned enterprises and government bodies,” including the defense industry, through its MBA program by 2018, according to the report. MSU is a publicly funded institution, and Strategy Risks estimates U.S. taxpayer support for the program reached tens of millions of dollars.

The estimation of taxpayer funding rests on the most detailed figures available, which appear in a recruiting presentation from the Chinese Agricultural University, according to the report. However, the report notes that the materials Strategy Risks found gave “conflicting accounts of the program’s finances.” Public recruiting materials for the MBA program describe “different prices, subsidy arrangements, and responsible payers.”

“We are aware of the report released by Strategy Risks regarding Missouri State University. No taxpayer dollars were directed toward the program, as the report alleges but readily admits it cannot substantiate,” an MSU spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

By 2015, 107 finance personnel from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) system entities had completed the MSU MBA program, according to the report. AVIC is “China’s primary state-owned aviation and defense conglomerate,” which the Department of War designated as a “Communist Chinese military company” in June 2020, and an Executive Order from the Trump administration “prohibited Americans from holding securities in any company on that list.”

One graduate of the MSU MBA program became Party Secretary, Chairman, and Legal Representative for the AVIC International
Financial Leasing Co., according to the report. He was already working for the company as a senior manager when he completed his MBA in 2013.