Editor’s Pick: Washington Examiner Exposes Shameless VA School Taking Chinese Money

March 9th, 2023 5:31 PM

This week in the Washington Examiner, Justice Department reporter Jerry Dunleavy uncorked a series of reports uncovering a new scandal involving the school system in Fairfax County, Virginia, an ultra-blue suburb of Washington D.C. as their Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has taken “hundreds of thousands of dollars from groups tied to China’s military.”

TJ, as it’s commonly referred to locally, has “consistently ranked as the top high school in the nation.” On Tuesday, Dunleavy explained that it partnered with “partnered with Tsinghua University High School (TUHS) in 2014 to assist it and China generally with adopting the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and advanced lab research TJHSST is famous for.”

“TUHS is closely tied to Tsinghua University, considered by the Pentagon to be a Chinese military university,” Dunleavy added.

“As part of this agreement,” he explained, the school pulled in “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from Tsinghua University plus “hundreds of thousands of dollars from Ameson Education and Cultural Exchange Foundation as well as the Chinese company Shirble, which were both led by men tied to China’s United Front Work Department, the Chinese government’s foreign influence campaign.”

On Wednesday, Dunleavy reported that a parental rights group is demanding action from state officials:

The nonprofit organization Parents Defending Education (PDE) helped unearth the Chinese funding for TJHSST and is now calling on Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Virginia attorney general Jason Miyares to investigate the saga, according to letters provided to the Washington Examiner.

But on Thursday, TJ came out in defense of their shameless collusion with the Chinese Communist Party as Fairfax County Public Schools media relations manager Julie Moult said it’s “a world-renowned academic institution” and thus “[i]t is not unusual for elite public schools, colleges, and universities in the U.S. to benefit from donations and grants from various sources, including international sources.”

Follow the links above to read more of Dunleavy’s reporting.