We all know that China has been buying up a lot of American farmland, including farmland near military bases. This should raise all the alarm bells for Americans, because it's clear to this writer that China has been engaged in a "gray-zone conflict" against the U.S. for years. This includes not only the farmland purchases, but the thousands of Chinese nationals who have crossed our open borders. Known Chinese nationals have been arrested for conspiring to smuggle biological materials into the country, including three from the University of Michigan lab who were charged earlier this month. In a press release from the Justice Department, they outline the charges against Xu Bai, 28, Fengfan Zhang, 27 and Zhiyong Zhang, 30:
According to the criminal complaint, in 2024 and 2025, Bai and F. Zhang were the recipients of multiple shipments containing concealed biological materials related to round worms which had been sent from the PRC to the United States by Chengxuan Han, a citizen of the PRC. Han was pursuing a Ph.D. from the College of Life Science and Technology in the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan, PRC and in June 2025, traveled to the United States to work in the laboratory at UM. Han recently pleaded no contest to three counts of smuggling and one count of false statements, was sentenced and then removed from the United States.
After Han’s arrest and removal from the United States, UM initiated an internal investigation into the Shawn Xu laboratory. All three defendants refused to attend a mandatory meeting or participate in the investigation and so were terminated. This termination made them eligible for removal by the Department of Homeland Security.
Even TikTok, part of the Chinese-owned company ByteDance, engages in data harvesting and algorithmic manipulation that critics say is used to influence young voters and undermine American politics.
In short, China might be fighting and winning a war against the U.S. without ever firing a shot, but by using economic and technological means.
This includes Fred Hu, Chairman and Founder of Primavera Capital, a $20 billion private equity fund, who goes by the nickname "Red Fred."
‘Instead of waging war, Fred Hu has advanced Chinese interests through his mastery of finance.’
— UnHerd (@unherd) November 20, 2025
Meet the man buying up American schools. @DavidRoseUK 👇https://t.co/OkZKjZKHRE
Hu has been buying up American schools and — thanks to the abysmal state of American public education — will likely draw in families who want a better education for their students. What many don't know is that such an education comes with a side of Chinese Communist policies and politics, too. He also praises a Chinese general responsible for the death of millions and has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
"Red Fred" Hu owns 240 schools in America. Addressing western elites, he says China is an opportunity, not a threat. But I can reveal he's long been active in CCP fronts, and regards a Chinese general who butchered millions and annexed land as his "hero". https://t.co/c4Q5IVCsm4
— David Rose (@DavidRoseUK) November 20, 2025
And then there is “Red Fred” Hu. In 2008, two years before he founded Primavera Capital, Hu became a delegate to the Hunan Province CPPCC. He has been pictured on its website and been a delegate many times subsequently, most recently in 2023. He has also been listed as director in the Western Returned Scholars Association, a second United Front Work Department front organisation, ostensibly for Chinese students who have studied in the west. According to the The US-China Economic and Security Commission (USCC), which monitors threats from China on behalf of the US Congress, this association conducts “influence operations” and “disseminates propaganda”. Its operatives have engaged in industrial espionage, facilitating the transfer of sensitive technologies from America to China.
Last year, when the Daily Caller published details of Hu’s involvement with the CPPCC, Primavera Capital issued a statement claiming he was not a member of the Chinese Communist Party, nor an adviser to the Chinese government. Yet Hu’s own professional biographies state that he does advise the government. Moreover, even if he is not a party member, his connections to it and the Chinese state are both political and financial.
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Naturally, when he addresses Western audiences, Hu is keen to dismiss any concerns. America, he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed during the first Trump administration, was “overly paranoid” about China’s rise, and its fears were “unfounded”. America should see China as an opportunity, not a threat, and encourage “virtuous, two-way capital flows”.
He presents a rather different face when he’s talking to a Chinese audience. In an interview for a newsletter for graduates of Tsinghua University, where he gained his masters (and where Xi Jinping studied before him), Hu said that his personal “hero” was the 19th-century general Zuo Zongtang, who crushed the Taiping rebellion at a cost of 30 million lives, going on to fight the Hui war against western Chinese Muslims — the forerunners of the Uyghurs. “If I hadn’t studied economics, I would have wanted to be a great general like Zuo Zongtang, expanding the country’s territory,” Hu said. (Hu, the Primavera Group and NewOpen have not responded to my requests for comment).
Parents have expressed concerns about Hu and Primavera's involvement in American schools. In 2019, New York parents objected to the sale of a BASIS school in Brooklyn. They were worried the school's curriculum would change, and were told it wouldn't.
Often, these schools are cheaper than nearby competitors, which also appeals to parents. This led one mom to joke to Unherd, "When you first look at the schools’ rankings versus cost, you’re like: ‘Wow, sweet deal!’ But then you realise why it’s such a sweet deal. I’ve joked with friends that I guess the upside is, if my kid went there, he’d be 100% prepared to keep the rest of the family out of CCP re-education camps when China takes over!”
And that's the troubling part.
Some politicians have pushed back against this, too. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspended public scholarships at four schools owned by Primavera in 2023, citing Primavera's "direct ties" to the CCP. In 2024, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) warned Biden's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that the website Tutor.com was a "national security risk" because it too was owned by Primavera and allowed access to the personal data of military members and their families. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) also requested an investigation into Primavera's relationship with its Chinese owners.
Primavera quietly sold Tutor.com back in September.
The risk and threat posed by the infiltration of the CCP in American schools cannot be overstated. As we've seen with Qatari influence in Western colleges and universities, this global involvement undermines American interests, foments violent and destructive unrest, and indoctrinates our youth into adopting anti-American and anti-Western Civilization attitudes and policies.
It's a recipe for disaster, and one that must be stopped.