(NewsReady.com) – For years, China has been hiring ex-US military officers and pilots in an attempt to get inside information on our armed forces. Now they’ve come up with an even more insidious plan. Chinese companies with links to the communist regime are buying US schools that help train future officers — and the Biden Administration isn’t doing anything about it.
On January 31, Representative Mike Waltz (R-FL) sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warning that China is buying up private schools with Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps programs.
Today, Waltz sent a letter to Sec. Austin to request a survey of the DoD's Army, Navy, & Air Force JROTC programs located at private schools across the country to determine whether those schools are owned by a subsidiary of a foreign company.
Read more 👇https://t.co/zbGtpl457G pic.twitter.com/MGiWgY2l5k
— Congressman Waltz Press (@RepWaltzPress) January 31, 2023
So far, at least two schools have been taken over. The Florida Preparatory Academy in Melbourne, FL, was bought by Newopen USA — a subsidiary of Newopen Group — in 2017. The chairman of Newopen Group is a member of a CCP-sponsored business association. The school, formerly called the Florida Air Academy, has an active US Air Force JROTC program.
The New York Military Academy, founded in 1889, was bought by the Chinese-owned Research Center on Natural Conservation Inc. in 2015. The “Research Center” is also linked to the CCP. All students at the Academy are members of the Army JROTC.
The JROTC program is open to students from 9th to 12th grade, and gives basic military training. Importantly, while members aren’t in the US Armed Forces and have no obligation to enlist after high school, many do go on to ROTC or service academies like West Point or Annapolis. Many of our future military officers pass through them — and China is buying access to those future officers at a key point in their lives. Waltz says he’s worried that students from Chinese-owned schools “will have a sympathetic view of China’s political and strategic aims.”
Waltz, a former active-duty Green Beret and currently a colonel in the National Guard’s 20th Special Forces Group, is asking Austin to investigate how many schools with JROTC programs are owned by foreign companies. If China is influencing our service-oriented students, we need to know before those students run our military.
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