The University of Michigan is supposed to be the pride of the Midwest.
A 200-year-old college that has been dubbed a ‘Public Ivy,’ the school is steeped in tradition, pride and academic excellence. It is also the home of the Wolverines and the Big House, the largest stadium in America.
Now, the beloved school is increasingly seen as a back door for Beijing – a soft target for Chinese operatives, covert networks and alleged plots involving genetically modified parasites and crop-killing fungi.
And recent arrests show just how deep the rot may run.
On November 5, federal agents charged three Chinese nationals – Xu Bai, 28, Fengfan Zhang, 27, and Zhiyong Zhang, 30 – with conspiring to smuggle biological materials into the US while working at a University of Michigan (U-M) research lab.
They were the newest names in a disturbing string of cases involving Chinese nationals allegedly moving dangerous biological samples through campus labs under the guise of academic research.
According to the DOJ, Bai and Fengfan Zhang allegedly received multiple shipments from China between 2024 and this year containing ‘concealed biological materials related to round worms.’ The parasites are known to infect both humans and livestock.
The samples allegedly had ‘genetic modifications,’ according to notes in the suspect packages, and were shipped to them while they worked at U-M’s Shawn Xu laboratory, prosecutors say.
Zhiyong Zhang, meanwhile, was charged with making false statements to federal agents about the shipments. The three men have been terminated by U-M, making them ‘eligible for removal’ from the US.
These cases follow the June arrest of Chengxuan Han, a PhD student from Wuhan who pleaded no contest to smuggling charges before being deported and barred from returning to the US.
Han had sent the modified worm samples from China before joining the lab in Ann Arbor herself.
‘Smuggling biological materials under the guise of research is a serious crime that threatens America’s national and agricultural security,’ Attorney General Pam Bondi said about the arrests.
But the worms weren’t the only thing allegedly crossing borders.
In the same month Han was arrested, federal prosecutors charged a Chinese couple – Zunyong Liu and Yunqing Jian – with trying to smuggle a dangerous crop fungus into the US, which could potentially devastate American fields and poison livestock.
Prosecutors said the pair intended to use the U-M lab ‘to further their scheme.’ Liu is currently in China and is unlikely to return to the US after being arrested at Detroit Metro Airport and charged in the investigation. Jian pleaded guilty, served a five-month sentence, and is being deported.
Experts warn that even if such pathogens already exist in America, importing or modifying them without permits poses huge national-security risks.
These alleged instances appear to persist, on a campus with 53,000 students, including 4,000 Chinese nationals – roughly half the university’s foreign population.
US Attorney Jerome Gorgon claimed that the more than 600 research and teaching labs at U-M had repeatedly been hijacked by Chinese students and researchers for illicit activities.
And biology labs aren’t the only campus spots that have subsequently drawn scrutiny.
In 2023, five Chinese U-M students were charged after a midnight visit to Camp Grayling, a military training installation in northern Michigan.
Federal agents say they deleted photos, lied about why they were there and tried to cover their tracks. They had all graduated and left the US before charges were filed in October 2024.
In 2020, two Chinese U-M master’s students were imprisoned after illegally photographing a naval air station in Key West, Florida.
Prosecutors say a pattern is emerging – and experts say it’s no coincidence.
‘At some point, pattern becomes practice,’ Gorgon said in a statement from the DOJ.
For China analyst Gordon Chang, the allegations of infiltration of Michigan’s most beloved institution are a flashing red light – and a painful one for locals in particular.
‘It is a knife at the heart for the people in the Midwest,’ Chang, the author of Plan Red, told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview.
If the charges are proven, ‘it shows the thoroughness of China’s penetration of the US that an iconic institution like UMich has been thoroughly penetrated by the Chinese Communist Party,’ he added.
Chang said China is carrying out ‘unrestricted warfare’ – a sprawling campaign using everything from biological agents to propaganda to research partnerships in order to infiltrate US institutions.
He said U-M is just one visible node in a vast, hidden network.
‘I would love to believe that UMich is the only American institution of higher education which has been targeted like this by the Chinese, but I know that that’s not the case,’ he told the Daily Mail.
Representatives for the University of Michigan did not answer the Daily Mail’s request for comment.
Previously, university officials said they were cooperating with federal investigators and condemned ‘any actions that seek to cause harm, threaten national security or undermine the university’s critical public mission.’
They have also reviewed their protocols on research security, according to a statement from July.
But the scandals keep piling up.
One figure at the center of the storm – Professor Shawn Xu, who oversees the lab tied to multiple alleged smuggling cases – declined to respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.
His lawyer, David Nacht, distanced Xu from the hiring decisions.
‘My client doesn’t have the final word as to who gets hired in his lab,’ he told the Daily Mail.
The university has spent years deepening research relationships with China – and raking in foreign money.
Since 2020, U-M has received $375 million in foreign funding, including tens of millions from Chinese entities.
The university struck major partnerships with:
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) – on aerospace, engineering, and rocket-fuel science
- Beijing Institute for Collaborative Innovation (BICI)
- Southern University of Science and Technology
- Peking University
- Multiple Chinese robotics and tech firms
In 2017, U-M even launched its official name in Chinese characters.
And until 2019, it hosted a Confucius Institute, widely seen as a soft-power arm of Beijing.
But Washington is waking up.
In July, the US Department of Education opened a formal investigation into U-M after finding ‘inaccurate and incomplete disclosures’ of foreign funding.
The department warned the school that its labs were ‘vulnerable to sabotage.’
It accused the school’s China Studies director and others of an ‘apparent indifference’ to national security concerns.
U-M administrators must now account for every dollar of the $375 million they’ve taken since 2020.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party issued a series of blistering reports exposing how the university’s joint projects with SJTU and other institutions were boosting Beijing’s military ambitions.
Committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said U-M’s joint institute with SJTU posed an ‘unacceptable national security risk’ and was a ‘pipeline for the Chinese Communist Party’s military ambitions.’
U-M shut down the institute in January 2025, but critics say that was far too late.
The uproar comes as the Trump administration tightens restrictions on Chinese students – while hinting they could be eased in a future bargain touching on trade, tech, rare-earth minerals, fentanyl and Taiwan.
Washington’s message is clear: Educational exchange is now intertwined with national security.
Against this backdrop, some Chinese nationals in the US say a climate of fear has descended on scholars who only want to join America’s world-class colleges – not to spy for Beijing.
One described a ‘chill’ in academia. Another, who had just been denied a scholarly post due to the prevailing mistrust, said he felt like a ‘grain of sand under the wheel of time,’ according to the BBC.
Academics at U-M and beyond say federal efforts are discouraging all research tie-ups with China – even those on urgent issues such as climate change and pandemics.
But for watchdogs like Chang, the crackdown must go further.
He argues Chinese researchers connected to hostile activities should be treated as enemy combatants – not students, visitors or confused academics – and caged in Guantánamo Bay.
Chang says that’s the only way to stop Beijing’s long game – a campaign he describes as ‘systematic, deeply entrenched and far more aggressive than most Americans realize.’
The blitz of federal arrests has put Ann Arbor in the center of this maelstrom.
A place once known for football glory, medical breakthroughs and Midwest charm, now thrust onto the front lines of a geopolitical contest.
