Representative John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on China, has sent a letter to the United States Heartland China Association (USHCA) requesting verifiable assurances that the organization is not acting as an unregistered agent of the People’s Republic of China or facilitating covert foreign influence in the United States. Moolenaar’s letter, addressed to Robert Lee Holden, Jr., chairman and president of USHCA, also expresses concern that the organization is an instrument of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) United Front Work Department, which directs CCP influence operations worldwide. He refers Holden to the Select Committee’s 2023 report on the United Front Work Department (UFWD) titled United Front 101.
Holden, a former Democratic governor of Missouri (2002-2005), is joined on the USHCA board of directors and board of advisors by pro-Beijing former governors, diplomats, academics, and business figures including Susan A. Thornton (CFR, formerly of the State Department, currently with Brookings Institution); former Democratic governor of Oklahoma Brad Henry (2003-2011); former Democratic governor of Mississippi Ronnie Musgrove; former Republican governor of North Dakota Edward Schafer; former president of the US-China Business Council Craig Allen; and Dan Wright, who served as U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s managing director for China and the Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED).
The United States Heartland China Association is almost certainly an important arm of the CCP’s United Front Work Department, whose work is directed by the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China’s version of the KGB. The USHCA partners with the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), founded by Tung Chee-hwa, former vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a principal arm of the CCP’s United Front system. Chairman Moolenaar sent a letter to the acting president of Columbia University in 2025 alerting her to intelligence information that the CUSEF is funded by the CCP and should be considered a “malign influence” with which Columbia should not be associated.
USHCA notes it facilitates Chinese student enrollment in U.S. universities, with 76,710 PRC students attending heartland universities in 2022 and approximately 266,000 enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities during the 2024-2025 academic year. Fewer than 900 U.S. students studied in China during that period. However, USHCA connects American students, educators, business leaders, and politicians with indoctrination experts at CCP-run institutions.
In November 2025, the Heartland Leaders Delegation organized by USHCA led a 10-day trip to China for local officials, including Mayor Kim Norton of Rochester, Minnesota; Mayor Deborah Feinen of Champaign, Illinois; Mayor Shaundel Washington-Spivey of La Crosse, Wisconsin; Mayor Dan Gibson of Natchez, Mississippi; State Senator Hillman T. Frazier of Mississippi’s 27th District; Commissioner Erika Sugarmon of Shelby County, Tennessee; and Dr. Michael Prendergast, a vascular surgeon from Chicago. The delegation visited Zhejiang University, West Lake University in Hangzhou, Hubei University, and Tsinghua University. Photos and commentary on the USHCA website depict a “glorious picture” of Chairman Xi Jinping’s regime.
Behind these carefully staged visits lies the steel-fisted control of the CCP and MSS. Since 2023, the CCP has implemented unprecedented surveillance and ideological integration across Chinese universities, embedding Marxist-Leninist theory, Mao Zedong thought, and Xi Jinping’s guiding ideology into all academic and administrative functions.