OAN Deven Berryhill
UPDATED 6:30 PM PT – Tuesday, March 7, 2023
According to sources, Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County, Virginia has been flagged by a watch dog group for accepting $1 million in donations from entities tied to the Chinese Military.
The Thomas Jefferson Partnership Fund (TJPF,) received $250,000 in 2015 and 2016 from another nonprofit called the Ameson Education and Cultural Exchange Foundation. TJPF is a non-profit organization who raised funds for the school’s science and technology department. The Virginia high school also received between $100,000 and $500,000 in 2018, according to the conservative group Parents Defending Education.
According to their website, Parents Defending Education (DFE) formed as an America grassroots organization to reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas. Its been recently reported that the DFE has obtained the TJPF’s campaign donor list. The DFE said that the list revealed three Chinese-linked groups that have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the TJPF campaign. The Parents Defending Education team revealed that there were ties that each of the three organizations had to Chinese government interests.
It’s been reported that Ameson’s founder and executive vice chairman, Sean Zhang, had ties to China’s so-called United Front Work Department (UFWD). In the 2018 U.S. -China Economic And Security Review Commission staff research report, stated that the UFWD was created to “co-opt and neutralize” any opposition to the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
The PDE also revealed Thomas Jefferson High School had a relationship with Tsinghua University High School in Beijing from 2013 until 2014. They also claimed that the Chinese High School was known to have ties to the Chinese Military.
During the time of the Trump administration, the U.S. government created the Higher Education Act which instituted a high amount of accountability for American universities receiving funding of $250,000 or more.
The President and founder of PDE, Nicole Neily, recently referenced other confirmed instances where U.S. universities were infiltrated by the Chinese in what has been called “Confucius Institutes.” Critics of Confucius Institutes have voiced concerns that these institutions have operated as a vehicle for industrial and military espionage.
Neily tweeted on Tuesday that, as of now, these Confucius Institutes have only been monitored at the university level.
“The scandal at Thomas Jefferson High School highlights the urgency of putting such controls in place in all levels of the American education system. Without doubt, similar problems are occurring in numerous other schools across the country, and it poses an acute threat to America’s national security,” said the PDE president.
By: OAN
