Wirths and Space block Chinese Communists from gaining foothold in Princeton

America won!  Thanks to Assemblymen Hal Wirths and Parker Space, the Chinese Communists will not be buying a college in Princeton.

Alerted by businessman-philanthropist Mike Hennessy, the Assemblymen got to work generating grassroots opposition to the all but done sale of Westminster Choir College to a Chinese company controlled by the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) Navy and the Communist Party of China (CPC).  Westminster is a division of the Westminster College of the Arts, and is part of Rider University.

Last June, Rider University had signed a purchase and sale agreement with a newly created entity called Kaiwen Education, which is controlled by the Chinese navy and its Communist Party masters.  Assemblymen Wirths and Space were concerned that the sale could give the Chinese government a foothold on the Princeton campus, with all its sensitive research and technology facilities.

Rider had provoked the ire of Hennessy and others, when it banned Chick-Fil-A from opening on campus, despite a majority vote by students asking for a Chick-Fil-A restaurant on campus.  It seems Rider’s administration thought that Chick-Fil-A’s ownership was too Christian and therefore “controversial”.  Apparently Kaiwen, the PLA Navy, and the CPC were just the right amount of communist.

Along with other Rider benefactors, Hennessy organized a grassroots effort to stop the sale, while there were protests by students and faculty, as well as legal challenges. Federal authorities were contacted and had become interested in the matter.  Under this pressure and the pressure from legislators like Wirths and Space, the state attorney general's office delayed the pending sale in March, asking Rider for more information about the deal.

Westminster Choir College is the world’s foremost college of religious music.  A residential college located on a 23-acre campus in the heart of Princeton, it is a four-year music college and graduate school that “prepares men and women for careers as performers and as music leaders in schools, universities, churches and professional and community organizations.”

Rider University announced on Monday that the two sides had mutually agreed to not extend the agreement.  This essentially cancelled the sale, although the money-hungry Rider administration still publicly held out hope for an “alternative relationship” with the Chinese Communists.

Assemblymen Wirths and Space, who introduced a resolution (ACR-222) in opposition to the sale, called the announcement a big win.

"It took many vocal opponents, but our efforts paid off.  Rider University made the right decision to stop the sale," Wirths said. "From the very beginning, the company's interest in the music college for the purpose of academia seemed suspicious."

Kaiwen Education has no experience in higher education.  It was a made-up subsidiary of a government-owned Chinese defense contractor.

"Today's announcement is a big win against the authoritarian Chinese government who we feared might be using the guise of academia to access Princeton's world-class scientists, researchers and institutions for nefarious purposes," Space said.

State Senator Steve Oroho introduced the Senate version of the resolution, SCR-160.  Surprisingly, no Democrats and few Republicans saw it as a battle worth fighting, let alone one that they could win.

“Standing up to one of the world’s most repressive regimes – on the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square – wasn’t considered important enough to most of the Legislature,” one grassroots campaigner said.  “While millions of people in Hong Kong are protesting this oppressive regime, the Democrats who run the Legislature were more than happy to turn a campus in Princeton over to them.”   

Another noted:  “Guess it lacked a connection to LGBTQ… that’s all that matters these days.”   

This could have been a real moment of unity in Trenton for Republicans and all but the most craven Democrats.  Instead, the Democrats tried to block legislative action in opposition to the sale, while most Republicans didn’t have the good sense to take a stand.  Thankfully, guys like Hal Wirths and Parker Space did, but where the hell is everybody else’s political radar these days???

No wonder so many members of the Republican base share sentiments like these…

NJGOP should try to stop sale of New Jersey college to Chinese Navy.

The Chinese Navy… yes, the Communist Chinese Navy… is trying to purchase a college in New Jersey.

For nearly a century, Westminster Choir College (part of Rider University), has been one of America’s leading academic institutions for advanced musical studies, with a core mission of “training ministers (with music as their ministry) in the Christian evangelical tradition.”  It is also one of America’s national treasures for classical music.  The college’s Westminster Choir has performed with the New York Philharmonic over 300 times, more than any other organization. 

This story has been reported extensively… from the New York Times to Fox News, but now there's opposition to a Chinese government-owned defense contractor for the Chinese Navy trying to buy it.

An alumni group, the Westminster Foundation, has sued to stop Rider University from selling it, claiming that the Chinese government would have a direct foothold in America academia.

The Westminster Foundation’s lawsuit contends that the company intended to run the school, Princeton Westminster International, is really owned by Bejing Wenhuaxuexin Education, which is a subsidiary of Bejing Kaiwen Education Technology, "a for-profit Chinese entity owned and controlled by the government of China."

The lawsuit states that just three weeks before it announced its intent to buy Westminster, Kaiwen changed its name from Jiangsu Zhongtai Bridge Steel Structure Company, "a manufacturer of components of Chinese naval vessels and is a defense contractor" for China's military," in order "to create the veneer and seeming appearance of an education entity to justify its acquisition of Westminster Choir College."

Security experts believe that the real reason the Chinese government wants to buy Westminster Choir College is to gain a foothold in Princeton’s regional academic community and then exploit Princeton's reputation as a center of studies for the U.S. intelligence community.  The United States government maintains contracts at known research centers in high tech, defense, and cyberspace that happen to be near Westminster's campus. Westminster Choir College is a tiny music school in one of the most sensitive centers of intelligence and defense research in the world.

The attorney for the Westminster Foundation recently was quoted:  "For the first time in American history, an American college would have been taken over by a unit of a foreign authoritarian foreign dictatorship, which is what China is. The sad reality is that academic freedom disappears, true education disappears, the ability to create music, drama culture, to study religion disappears because all of these things are subject to censorship in China."

So… what is the NJGOP going to do about it?

This is a made to order issue for Republicans and right-thinking Democrats alike.  So who is going to step up?