China Is Paying Missouri State U Millions of Dollars a Year To Send Its Best and Brightest to Business School, a Training Ground for Communist Party Elites: Report

Missouri State University has spent the past 25 years offering an MBA program for Chinese Communist Party officials and other "figures tied to China’s defense industry," with graduates often taking senior roles in Chinese firms under American sanctions, according to a new investigation from Isaac Stone's analytical firm Strategy Risks. The Chinese government is believed to be paying MSU several million dollars a year for the program.

The report, "Heartland For Hire," provides the first public accounting of several MSU master’s programs that have "trained more than 1,500 current and future managers for Chinese state-owned enterprises and government bodies" since the programs began in 2001. Graduates from these MBA and Executive MBA programs have gone on "to senior roles in China’s defense industry, strategic supply chains, and surveillance-technology sector"—including those sanctioned for aiding the People’s Liberation Army and providing technology to Russia for its war against Ukraine.

Strategy Risks writes that Chinese recruiting materials offer "conflicting accounts of the program’s finances," but state that, as of 2014, half of the $108,000 tuition cost was covered by the communist government. Students paid one-quarter of the cost, around $27,000, while the additional sum was covered by "the U.S. government" through "taxpayer-funded support."

But public information from Missouri State suggests the Chinese may be paying double the cost of the program, with Missouri itself not spending a dime. MSU says on its website that it costs an out-of-state student about $34,000 in tuition and fees to complete an MBA. Out-of-state students usually pay full-bill, or the total cost of the degree to a public, state-funded university in the United States. If the Chinese government and students are indeed paying Missouri State more than $75,000 per degree, it would be a lucrative arrangement for the cash-strapped university, which is currently dealing with a budget shortfall.

Strategy Risks said that its findings offer fresh "evidence of China’s state apparatus using a public American university, American accreditation, and American taxpayer dollars to enhance the management and technical capabilities of the individuals who run the CCP’s defense industrial base."

The findings are certain to garner interest on Capitol Hill, where Republicans have been investigating China’s close ties to multiple American universities. The Washington Free Beacon first reported in May 2025, for instance, that Harvard University taught courses to members of a Chinese "paramilitary organization" on several occasions after the United States sanctioned the group for its role supporting the Uyghur genocide. The report prompted House lawmakers to threaten Harvard’s nonprofit status and came just a month before a separate report from Strategy Risks documented how the CCP transformed Harvard into "a fertile human capital recruiting ground."

MSU’s utility to the prestige-obsessed Chinese is less clear. The MBA program is well-regarded as an affordable and flexible degree program that can help advance careers in the Midwest, but does not have an international reputation.

But Strategy Risks posits that the Chinese may have selected MSU as a specific, low-key training ground to mold ideal party leaders. "MSU MBA credentials carry value not merely as educational qualifications but as evidence that individuals are aligned with the Party’s strategic priorities and are the types of talent sought by the Party," according to the report. "The degree exposes participants to American management methods, capital markets, and corporate governance structures — knowledge directly applicable to running state enterprises that compete internationally and procure from Western suppliers."

The latest report on MSU’s ties to China—gleaned through "architecture from Chinese-language government recruitment notices, industry association circulars, and consular records"—details multiple "discrepancies between how the program was presented to American audiences and how it operated." The MSU training program, Strategy Risks said, "has until now evaded scrutiny."

Graduates from the program include Chinese executives at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the largest state-owned defense conglomerate, which has been sanctioned multiple times by the federal government for aiding the PLA. The firm also "reportedly supplied components to a subsidiary of Rostec, a Russian state-owned defense company sanctioned by the U.S.," according to Strategy Risks’ report.

In December 2019, the report reveals, MSU "enrolled active AVIC employees in full-time MBA training" and arranged meetings for them with a delegation from China’s Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which is also sanctioned for its ties to the PLA. MSU is still listed by Nanjing University as one of its partner schools for research projects that include "aviation transport management" and "military and civil integration," the report notes.

Other "documented MSU graduates" include the vice president of iFlytek, a leading artificial intelligence company that was designated in 2019 by the U.S. Commerce Department for supplying surveillance technology used by China to monitor its embattled Uyghur minority population in Xinjiang. MSU also trained a senior executive with the Jianshe Industry Group, a Chinese defense firm designated by the Pentagon, according to Strategy Risks.

While the degrees for these programs are conferred by MSU, it is "Chinese state institutions" that control who is accepted, the criteria, and the composition "of each cohort," according to the report. Strategy Risks determined that the program was initially "conceived and commissioned by a Chinese government delegation in 1999." "Program applicants," the report adds, "have received preferential admissions treatment from MSU, including but not limited to waived English-proficiency requirements."

"One of the most significant features of this program," the report states, "is that the CCP – and not MSU – selected the students." Recruitment documents reviewed by Strategy Risks made clear that "a range of Chinese state and party institutions" were responsible for administering the program, including the CCP’s state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), which oversees the nation’s defense manufacturers.

Chinese consular documents and foreign ministry records reviewed for the report further show "high-level contact between Chinese diplomats and MSU's leadership." Between 2017 and 2019, for instance, the Chinese consul general in Chicago "met several times" with then-university vice president Jim Baker "to discuss expanding the university's educational cooperation with China." Baker traveled to China "on MSU’s behalf more than 100" times over a 20-year period, the report says.

MSU, meanwhile, acknowledged how lucrative the program is in a 2011 blog post by then-president Clifton Smart.

"The China Programs are a major financial operation," Smart wrote. "In 2011-12, for example, the 569 students in the undergraduate and graduate programs will generate about $5.85 million in gross revenue. The EMBA program will generate about $1.3 million in revenues."

The funding channels between MSU and Chinese entities remain opaque, but Strategy Risks was able to unearth a general picture through recruiting notices and other channels.

"A 2014 recruiting presentation from China Agricultural University, China’s oldest agricultural school, states that students paid approximately $27,000 as their share," according to the report. "This is described as one-quarter of the total costs, with the Chinese government covering half and a U.S. government subsidy covering the remaining quarter."

A separate 2014 document from China’s state-controlled chief accountants' association states that the fees are set "in accordance with Ministry of Finance and State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs standards for overseas personnel expenses and the U.S. government’s annual standards for university graduate tuition." It makes clear that participants in the MSU programs "receive a special Missouri state government project subsidy."

"In other words," Strategy Risks writes, "China's state finance system priced this program as an official government expense, and told participants that an American state government was helping pay for it."

But based on the publicly listed cost of an MSU MBA for out-of-state students, it’s highly unlikely that American taxpayers are paying a dime. A 2018 document published by the Shandong Provincial People's Government makes no mention of U.S. subsidies. It cites a tuition cost of $32,980 and total student costs of around $39,800 to $41,300. These costs, it says, "are to be covered by the sending employer."

Funding records maintained by MSU’s Office of Research Administration disclose that from fiscal years 2007 to 2020, the university "submitted funding requests totaling more than $18 million" to an "obscure entity" referred to as IMEC. The report describes IMEC—which is mentioned in documents under several different names—as a "private intermediary" that "sat between the Chinese state and MSU for various operational mechanics, from assembling participants to moving payments from Chinese state-linked sponsors to MSU."

Strategy Risks was unable to locate any "corporate registration, IRS filing, or non-profit records" for any of the three different names IMEC used in various communications.

MSU did not respond to a request for comment by Strategy Risks prior to the report’s publication and also did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment submitted on Tuesday afternoon.

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