Youngkin’s Office Vows to ‘Get to the Bottom’ of CCP Influence after NR Exposes Effort to ‘Clone’ Premier Virginia School

The State of Virginia has promised to look into Chinese Communist Party influence in Fairfax County Public Schools, after National Review reported a bombshell allegation that administrators at Thomas Jefferson High School sold the public school’s intellectual property to America’s adversaries. 

Parental-advocacy organization Parents Defending Education claimed on Thursday that a nonprofit organization affiliated with TJ High School, and run partly by the school’s administrators, made contractual agreements with three CCP-linked Chinese entities to exchange intellectual property for $3.6 million in cash payments.

TJ High School, which was for years America’s leading science, technology, engineering, and math school, was replicated in China at least 20 times, under a program named the “Thomas Schools.” Chinese officials who sought to “clone” the Virginia public school did so successfully, and with the help of TJ officials: Chinese delegations were given the school’s curriculum, syllabi, and floor plans and were led on tours of the schools; the officials were lauded by TJ as foreign partners.

“Governor Youngkin has been clear about the extent of the deeply disturbing efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate educational institutions in the United States,” Youngkin press secretary Christian Martinez told National Review. “Today’s reporting raises new questions about the nature of the CCP’s efforts to use the TJ Partnership Fund to influence students and obtain intellectual property, as well as what local school division officials knew about the relationship. The Virginia Department of Education will get to the bottom of this.”

A spokesman for the Virginia attorney general’s office confirmed to NR that “we are aware of the issue and will be placing it under review.”

TJ administrators called the Chinese payments “donations,” but in documents obtained by PDE and shared with NR, administrators refer multiple times to “contracts” made with Chinese entities — suggesting that the $3.6 million the 501(c)(3) Partnership Fund earmarked as “charitable contributions” could be subject to taxes.

“FCPS employees and staff bent over backwards to provide foreign donors unprecedented access to the inner workings of what was once the country’s premier secondary school — a courtesy that, strangely, has not been extended to either parents or the taxpayers who underwrote such innovation,” PDE president Nicole Neily told NR on Thursday. “TJ’s formula for success was handed over to CCP-linked officials for a few million dollars in donations and a handful of junkets for staff — a bargain-basement price and one that should have triggered alarm bells at the district, state, and federal levels.”

Virginia Republican Senate candidate Hung Cao was a member of TJ High School’s inaugural class. He told NR that it’s “heartbreaking to see my alma mater continue to fall.”

“Now, they are helping the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “The CCP poses a direct threat to Virginians and our public schools. Instead of helping America’s enemies and embracing Xi Jinping, our schools need to focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic. Republicans continue to fight against communism and to keep China’s influence out of Virginia.”