Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and chair of the House Republican Conference Elise Stefanik introduced a bill on Thursday that would ban the Pentagon from using a Chinese-linked tutoring service, following a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation into the company and its owners.
Cotton and Stefanik’s bill would prohibit the Department of Defense (DOD) from using Tutor.com, citing national security concerns that the company is owned by the Hong Kong-based group Primavera Capital. The DCNF reported on Friday that Primavera Capital’s CEO and founder, Fred Hu, has long-standing ties to multiple Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence units. (RELATED: DCNF Reporter Reveals How China-Linked Investor Owns Pentagon Contractor)
“There is no reason the Pentagon should be paying a Chinese-owned service that collects the data of our service members and their families. There are plenty of American companies that offer tutoring services and aren’t subject to the Chinese government,” Cotton said in a statement on Thursday.
Thread
PRIMAVERA CAPITAL:
– CEO Tied To CCP Influence Ops
– Invested In @BytedanceTalk (Chinese Parent Of @tiktok_us)
– Owns US K-12 Schools
– Runs @tutordotcom Tutoring Services The Pentagon Uses🙏Please read & share 🙏
Via @DailyCaller https://t.co/qp8Z1ZiCnR
— Philip Lenczycki 蔡岳 (@LenczyckiPhilip) March 15, 2024
“I am proud to join Senator Cotton in introducing legislation prohibiting the DoD from utilizing Communist Chinese-owned company Tutor.com to educate our service members and their families,” Stefanik said Thursday. “We cannot allow Communist China to collect an arsenal of data on our service members and their families that can be weaponized against them, posing a grave and unnecessary threat to America’s national security.”
Hu belonged to organizations that the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) asserts are elements of the CCP’s “United Front” Strategy. The United Front serves as a foreign influence and intelligence operation for the CCP and is under the direction of the “United Front Work Department (UFWD),” which itself has been identified as an intelligence service for Beijing.
Hu was a delegate for the Hunan province’s Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) as recently as 2022. CPPCC delegates “attend a high-profile annual meeting to receive direction from the CCP” and “serve as proxies for CCP interests by virtue of their participation in this forum,” according to the USCC.
“We found that he’s listed as a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and it says that he joined in 2008,” DCNF investigative reporter Philip Lenczycki told NTD’s “China In Focus” on Mar. 15.
CPPCC delegates must “uphold” CCP leadership, “keep state secrets” and “facilitate implementation of state foreign policy,” according to the organization’s charter.
“[Hu’s] listed there on the roster and there are even photos of him in attendance at meetings wearing this distinctive red clip-on badge,” Lenczycki said.
Hu is also listed as the director of the Western Returned Scholars Association’s (WRSA)’s “Entrepreneur Alliance,” which “is subordinate to the United Front Work Department, the CCP agency tasked with coordinating influence operations at the operational level,” according to the USCC. WRSA aims to “meet the requirements of the [CCP] leadership that it should ‘become a bridge between the Party and overseas students and scholars,” and “influence operations by disseminating propaganda.”
Primavera denied Hu’s relationship with Beijing or the CCP in a previous statement to the DCNF. Cotton sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in February, raising alarm that Primavera’s Tutor.com is a “long-standing” provider to the Pentagon, which uses taxpayer funds to pay for the service.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.