‘Fight with all their might for the motherland.’ Chinese students are pressured into advancing Beijing’s interests in America.
One of Beijing’s most notorious influence operations in Western academia came cloaked under the guise of traditional culture and under the name of Chinese sage Confucius.
Those entities—state-sponsored Chinese language programs called Confucius Institutes operating on American campuses—have since been exposed as a Trojan horse for Beijing’s propaganda, and most have shut down across the United States.
But another lesser-known cradle of influence in the Western academic world remains in place, hiding in plain sight under an innocuous acronym: CSSA.
CSSAs, or Chinese Students and Scholars Associations, are found across American campuses and act as a ready lever for Beijing to virtually hold Chinese students hostage, say activists, former club leaders, and experts.
By weaponizing students, they said, the Chinese regime gains a foothold in U.S. academia, stifles alternative voices, amplifies its own, and perpetuates a climate of fear.
The Trump administration has been simultaneously pushing back against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence operations on American soil, while also wanting to keep Chinese student numbers high. Those dual goals make it imperative to curb the CSSAs’ coercive tactics and sever its ties to the Party, China watchers say.
Actions undertaken by CSSAs often appear organic, such as bunches of students gathering to wave red flags on the streets to welcome Chinese authorities, or writing angry letters to school officials in opposition to events that displease the regime.
But the grassroots appearance is a facade—behind it is the Party, the overseer, and often, the financier, an Epoch Times review of public records, archived pages of now deleted information, and interviews with former CSSA members show.
‘Toe the Party Line’
The CSSA hit the spotlight in April 2024 when Chinese ambassador Xie Feng was invited to speak at Harvard University.
At a campus auditorium, protests delayed his address by 45 minutes as students shouted out about the abuses happening in China under his watch. When student Cosette Wu unfurled a protest banner, a CSSA leader, Zou Hongji, made a beeline toward her, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the room.
By Eva Fu
