The New York University Photo: Xinhua

A demand from US Republican lawmakers that six top US universities disclose their records of donations from China is just another move to hype China's influence and shows that Republicans are heading toward a more irrational way to antagonize China ahead of the November election, Chinese observers said.

Three Republican members of Congress, James Comer, Jim Jordan and Virginia Fox published a joint letter they sent to the six universities, which included Harvard University, New York University and Yale University, asking them to hand over donation records from foreign countries including China and Russia, citing that their dependency on foreign funding risked national security. 

In the letter, lawmakers accused these universities of "lacking of transparency in reporting as required by law," demanding the records of foreign anonymous donations from China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia since 2015, totaling more than $6 billion, the letter claims.  

The universities were given a week to provide the requested records. 

"Universities in the US have a tradition of raising funds via donations, and a complete system to manage those donations while maintaining academic freedom," Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times, saying that the senators' move is not only creating something out of nothing, but also underestimating those universities' time-honored traditions.

As the ties between China and the US are spiraling down rapidly and a presidential election is approaching, some people in the US, especially certain Republicans, are trying to attack China at every level, politicizing every arena of China-US cooperation, Zhang Tengjun, an assistant research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times.

Zhang said most of those renowned universities are in blue states, so the intent in making such a spectacle will exert a blow to the Democratic Party. But the expert warned that if Republicans continue to push a political agenda onto academic institutes, it will make US universities lose their appeal for Chinese students, and even students from all over the world. 

Earlier in February, the US Department of Education announced an investigation into Yale and Harvard for failing to disclose the alleged receipt of hundreds of millions dollars of foreign donations. 

In May, a faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania called allegations that the Penn Biden Center had accepted undisclosed donation from China "completely untrue," media reported. 

Big Chinese donors to the US universities are mainly businesspeople, such as  billionaire couple Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin who gifted $10 million to Yale University in 2014, in a wish to establish scholarship for impoverished Chinese students, and Chen Tianqiao,  founder, chairman and CEO of Shanda Investment Group, who donated $100 million to the California Institute of Technology in 2016 to sponsor the institute's brain science research.