Last week, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates announced a $50 million collaboration with a notorious Chinese Communist Party (CCP) affiliated university that conducts research for Beijing's military.
During a speech in Beijing, Gates announced a $50 million partnership with Tsinghua University via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
According to experts and think tanks like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the university is known to have "secret-level security credentials" for classified military research, trains students for China's nuclear weapons program and has reportedly enacted cyberattacks for the Chinese government.
The university is also where current Chinese President Xi-Jinping graduated in 2002 and is funded by the CCP's Ministry of Education and contains a committee appointed by the CCP to keep the university "in accordance with President Xi's hopes."
In addition to its close military ties with Beijing's military, the university is under the supervision of China's State Administration for Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense, which works to connect the nation's academics with its defense sector.
The new partnership with Microsoft billionaire will include drug discovery research, including studying viruses.
According to reports, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will spread the $50 contribution in five years. Beijing's municipal government will match the donation to "bolster the institute's drug discovery capacity."
In a press release on Thursday, Tsinghua University stated that it would support the new effort by "building and sharing research platforms, translating research discovery, and developing talent."
During his visit to China last week, Gates described Chinese scientists as "invaluable" to public health innovation. In 2021, the Gates Foundation sent around $30 million to organizations in China, including the National Health Commission, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and Tsinghua.
The Microsoft founder also met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, marking the first meeting the leader of China has had with a foreign corporate official in several years.
National security experts say that the latest action by Bill Gates is of deep concern, given that government agencies believe that the COVID-19 virus came from a lab in China, prompting Beijing to deny such reports.
China has also strengthened its military and intelligence-gathering resources, supplying arms to Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran while preparing for a potential invasion of the island state of Taiwan.
In Congress, lawmakers have called on American corporations to cease doing business with the Chinese government out of fear that Beijing might be able to infiltrate, exploit, and influence business leaders and strengthen China's economy.
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