Defense Department Might Need To Investigate This!

(USNewsMag.com) – According to a letter to the Department of Defense penned by Representative Mike Waltz, there are private schools in America owned by Chinese subsidiaries with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

In the letter, Waltz asked U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to survey the JROTC programs in private schools to determine if the schools are owned by subsidiaries of foreign companies. The Congressman, who sits on the Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on readiness, expressed concern that the Chinese companies purchasing private schools in the United States could be related to the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative, which Waltz describes as an “infrastructure and global influence initiative.”

First announced in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative is billed as a massive infrastructure and development plan to create new trade routes connecting China with the rest of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America by land and sea. According to The World Bank, by 2018 the plan included 60 percent of the world’s population and roughly a third of world trade.

Many Western countries have been skeptical of China’s motives. Economists have accused the program of being “debt-trap diplomacy,” or a method of leveraging control over the countries they invested in knowing they would be unlikely to repay their debts.

One example provided by the Representative from Florida is a private school in New York owned by Fang Holdings, Ltd, a Chinese company. The former CEO, Mo Tianquan, was a delegate to a political advisory group the CCP convened as part of the United Front work. The United Front is a strategy of influencing or controlling groups and key individuals in other countries in order to advance the CCP’s global interests.

The school has an Army JROTC program. Another example is the Florida Preparatory Academy owned by Newopen USA, a subsidiary of the Chinese Newopen Group. That school has

Waltz hopes the Department of Defense will investigate the matter and determine the potential scope of influence China has over programs intended to develop future military leaders.