Inside Michigan State’s China Programs: From Advertising Classes to ‘Psychological Warfare’

A student entering Michigan State University’s international digital advertising program might expect to study branding, digital media and communications. What may be less obvious is the wider institutional network surrounding the Chinese universities involved in MSU’s partnerships — a network that a new report says reaches into Communist Party propaganda, public-opinion monitoring and military-linked training.

Michigan State’s own program description says its International Digital Advertising programs are designed to prepare students for international careers, with a focus on China and the United States. Students spend their first year at the Communication University of China’s campus in Hainan province before completing their second year at MSU in East Lansing. Those in the dual-degree track receive degrees from both universities.

But a Sept. 16 report by New York-based Strategy Risks titled “How a U.S. University Helped China Conduct ‘Psychological Warfare'” argues that looking only at the classroom tells an incomplete story. The report examines CUC’s role inside China’s Party-state communications system and its relationships with institutions connected to the People’s Liberation Army.

Strategy Risks makes an important distinction, stating in its full report that it “is not alleging that MSU knowingly supports Chinese military or propaganda objectives.” Instead, the researchers question whether American universities are doing enough to examine where communications expertise may eventually circulate once it enters a foreign institutional network.

A degree in advertising, split between China and Michigan

For students, the MSU-CUC program presents itself first and foremost as an international communications degree.

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According to MSU’s academic catalog, students in the dual-degree program complete 28 credits at CUC’s Hainan International College before completing another 18 credits at Michigan State.

The relationship dates back several years. MSU’s official database of international agreements lists its International Digital Advertising agreements with CUC as active since Nov. 19, 2019.

The Chinese portion of the curriculum, however, extends beyond advertising and media. According to the Strategy Risks report, compulsory courses include “Research on the Theory and Practice of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” and “Marxism and the Methodology of Social Science.”

The report also points to CUC’s explicitly political institutional mission. Strategy Risks cites university materials describing CUC as an “educational stronghold for the Party’s propaganda, ideological and cultural undertakings.”

CUC also hosts the National Key Laboratory of Media Convergence and Communication. According to the Strategy Risks findings, the laboratory conducts work involving artificial intelligence, data and media analysis and has identified protecting “ideological security and political security in the media field” as part of its mission.

For students themselves, there is no allegation that participation in the MSU program amounts to involvement in Chinese propaganda or military activity. The issue raised by the report is the broader institutional setting in which an otherwise conventional international communications degree operates.

Where academic partnerships meet military training

That setting becomes more significant when CUC’s relationships with China’s military are examined.

In April 2023, more than 40 faculty and research personnel from the PLA National Defense University’s College of Military Culture visited CUC, according to CUC’s own account of the visit. During the trip, the delegation toured CUC’s National Public Opinion Laboratory and participated in activities involving the “cognitive domain.”

A few months later, CUC organized a five-day training program for roughly 60 personnel from the same military college. CUC’s official description of the program said instruction covered cultural theory, creative thinking and international communication, and described the initiative as an effort to deepen cooperation and military-civil integration.

That relationship continued into 2025. A CUC project notice shows the university approved another week-long commissioned training course for personnel from the National Defense University’s College of Military Culture.

Strategy Risks also points to the physical proximity of these institutions. Its report says a new CUC facility is expected to house the MSU-CUC program alongside the National Public Opinion Laboratory and the National Key Laboratory of Media Convergence and Communication — laboratories that have hosted military-linked delegations.

The report stops short of alleging a direct transfer of MSU expertise to the Chinese military. In fact, it explicitly says available evidence does not show that such a transfer occurred. Instead, the concern is that civilian academic expertise can exist inside the same institutional environment as organizations involved in military training.

A second MSU relationship brings the phrase “psychological warfare” directly into the picture.

According to the Strategy Risks report, MSU’s Strategic Communication program has participated in a cooperative exchange and training agreement connected to a journalism and communications master’s program at Shanghai Normal University.

The Chinese program, the report says, includes study of “public psychological, conceptual, and information warfare,” as well as social-media information monitoring and strategic public influence.

Strategy Risks also says Shanghai Normal University established a public-opinion monitoring center with the Shanghai Municipal Propaganda Department in 2022. According to the report, reports produced through that center were later adopted by both Shanghai propaganda authorities and the CCP Central Propaganda Department.

For the researchers, that creates a potential pathway through which knowledge developed through international academic cooperation could circulate into China’s broader propaganda system.

When communications research becomes a security question

The issue is more complicated than a university teaching weapons technology or transferring classified research.

Advertising, audience analysis, social-media monitoring and artificial intelligence all have ordinary civilian applications. They are used every day to understand audiences, measure public opinion and determine how information spreads.

But the Strategy Risks report argues that the same capabilities can also be applied to propaganda, influence operations and what Chinese military researchers describe as “cognitive domain operations.”

That is why the researchers focus not only on what is being taught, but also on where that expertise may ultimately travel.

The report argues that existing U.S. research-security systems tend to focus heavily on areas with obvious military applications, such as advanced semiconductors, weapons and other sensitive technologies. Communications research, public-opinion analysis and audience targeting can receive less scrutiny despite their possible applications in influence and information operations.

Federal scrutiny of foreign relationships at American universities has meanwhile increased.

Under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, federally funded institutions must report foreign gifts and contracts totaling at least $250,000 from a foreign source during a calendar year. The U.S. Department of Education said in February that universities disclosed more than 8,300 foreign transactions worth over $5.2 billion for 2025.

Michigan has already seen another major university partnership with China end under congressional scrutiny. In January 2025, the University of Michigan announced it would terminate its joint institute with Shanghai Jiao Tong University after lawmakers raised concerns about the Chinese school’s defense-related research.

Following that decision, House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar said in an official statement that American universities needed to “protect the security of our nation’s research.”

The MSU case is different because the expertise involved is far less tangible.

There is no weapons system sitting in a laboratory or semiconductor design that can easily be classified as sensitive. Instead, Strategy Risks is asking whether skills taught in advertising and communications — understanding audiences, tracking opinion, using AI to analyze information and learning how messages influence people — require similar scrutiny when a foreign academic partner also works with propaganda bodies and military institutions.

That is the central question raised by the report: whether universities should look beyond the classroom and consider the broader system into which their expertise may flow.