Wake students traveled to China via CCP-linked exchange

Students from Heritage High School in Wake Forest spent 12 days in China last summer through a Chinese government-backed exchange program, according to a new report from the watchdog group Defending Education.

The report, released Aug. 13, says that the program is part of Beijing’s campaign to shape how American students view China. It documented roughly 83 universities and 26 K-12 schools across 30 states participating in China’s Young Envoys Scholarship program. Heritage High School is the only North Carolina K-12 school on the list.

The program grew out of a November 2023 invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping for 50,000 American students to study in China over five years. It is run by the China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE), an organization that says on its Chinese-language website that it takes “Marxism-Leninism … and Xi Jinping Thought” as its “guiding ideology” and vows to “always adhere to the leadership of the Party,” according to the report’s translation.

US lawmakers have identified CEAIE as part of China’s United Front system, an influence network that a US congressional commission says works to co-opt and neutralize opposition to Communist Party policies. Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Michigan, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, warned school leaders in 2025 that student trips funded by such organizations “serve as propaganda and influence operations rather than genuine cultural exchanges.”

“Wake County residents should be alarmed that a Chinese government initiative — designed explicitly to cultivate sympathy for the Chinese Communist Party — infiltrated a public school funded by their hard-earned tax dollars,” said Terry Stoops, director of government affairs at Defending Education, in comments to Carolina Journal. “Taxpayers rightfully expect children to Pledge Allegiance to the Flag, not pledge allegiance to Xi Jinping.”

‘The real China’

The Heritage High School trip is featured in the exchange program’s own newsletter, which describes a 12-day visit that opened Aug. 3, 2025, at Hebei Petroleum University of Technology in Chengde, northeast of Beijing.

At the opening ceremony, the newsletter reports, the university’s Communist Party committee secretary presented the visiting students with a camp flag. The university president Yu Liguo told them, “You are taking steps that will introduce the real China to the world, and your friendship will strengthen the foundation of China-U.S. cooperation.”

The Heritage students traveled as part of a larger American delegation. Their team leader was Wenjing Liu, a Chinese language instructor at Heritage High School, who told the program the trip would let her students “witness Chinese enchanting culture, time-honored history, and remarkable progress with their own eyes.”

The newsletter also quotes a 17-year-old Heritage High student who spoke in Chinese at the opening events and said she wanted to “promote a two-way cultural exchange.”

According to the newsletter, students toured the Palace Museum, the Great Wall at Jinshanling, and the imperial mountain resort at Chengde. They also participated in virtual-reality oil-extraction simulations, robotics demonstrations, and 3D-printing workshops.

Questions for the school board

Stoops pointed to Wake County school board policy 6800.5, which states that “clubs and organizations established and sponsored by outside agencies or groups shall not be considered school clubs and shall not function on school grounds or during the school day unless authorized by the principal.”

“Parents should ask whether the principal of Heritage High School authorized the Young Envoys Scholarship Program, which is sponsored by the China Education Association for International Exchange, to meet on campus,” Stoops said. “If a policy violation occurred, the school board has a responsibility to hold the principal and any associated faculty and staff accountable.”

Carolina Journal has asked the Wake County Public School System whether the trip received district approval, how it was funded, and whether the funding source was disclosed to parents. 

Stoops said Defending Education is sending public records requests to the schools identified in the program’s newsletters and will publish follow-up reports on its findings.

Duke and UNC also named

The report also lists Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill among participating universities. According to the program’s newsletter, fencing teams from both schools were among 11 American university squads that competed in an invitational at Tsinghua University in Beijing in August 2025.

A UNC junior is quoted in the newsletter saying the experience “convinced me that all people are closely linked — that is the truer reality, more vivid than any news report.”

Stoops said the North Carolina State Board of Education and the UNC Board of Governors “should immediately prohibit all North Carolina public schools and universities from participating in the Young Envoys Scholarship Program and any other program with direct ties to the Chinese government,” and that universities should disclose research and business ties to “foreign nations and entities of concern, particularly China and Russia.”

“Malign foreign actors have an insatiable desire to access elite American research universities, and thus educational institutions in the Research Triangle are undoubtedly near the top of their list,” Stoops said.

A familiar pattern

Wake County has been featured in previous reporting by Defending Education. The organization’s 2023 investigation identified Confucius Classrooms — a Chinese government-backed language and culture program — in nearly a dozen North Carolina districts and schools, and singled out North Carolina for closer scrutiny because of the state’s 11 military bases.

Citing the district’s own budget documents, that report found Wake County received $50,000 in 2014-15 from Hanban — an arm of China’s Ministry of Education — to operate Confucius Classrooms in five schools, plus another $50,000 in 2016-17 routed through the North Carolina-based nonprofit Go Global NC and NC State University’s Confucius Institute. 

As late as the 2021-22 budget, the report found, the district was still running Confucius Classrooms on carryover funds.

Confucius programming has since ended at most participating schools under pressure from the federal government, according to Defending Education, which argues the Young Envoys program has taken its place.

“Wake students traveled to China via CCP-linked exchange” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.