The CEO of a Chinese venture capital firm that has extensive ties to the Chinese Community Party (CCP) also owns tutoring services in the United States with a Pentagon contract to tutor American military members, the Daily Caller reported Friday.
Primavera Capital Group bought Tutor.com and The Princeton Review in January 2022, inheriting a Pentagon contract along with it. Primavera CEO Fred Hu was identified by the U.S. as belonging to Chinese organizations that are part of the CCP's "United Front" system, according to the Daily Caller.
United Front is overseen by the United Front Work Department, which is characterized as a "Chinese intelligence service" by the U.S.
Primavera Capital was also an early investor in TikTok Chinese parent company ByteDance.
Primavera received regulatory approval to acquire Tutor.com and Princeton Reviews in May 2023, 15 months after the sale, The Wall Street Journal reported then. Tutor.com has long provided free services to active duty, reserve and other U.S. military service members and Defense Department personnel.
That caught the attention of Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who sent a letter to Department of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last month insisting the DOD "immediately end that relationship."
"This business relationship is ill-advised, reckless, and a danger to U.S. national security," Cotton wrote.
"While providing educational services, Tutor.com collects personal data on users, such as location, internet protocol addresses, and contents of the tutoring sessions," Cotton wrote. "As Chinese national security laws require companies to release confidential business and customer data to the Chinese government, we are paying to expose our military and their children's private information to the Chinese Communist Party."
Newsmax reached out to Sen. Cotton for comment and whether Secretary Austin ever responded by the deadline of Feb. 20 with information Cotton requested.
A Primavera spokesperson told the Daily Caller that Hu "is not a member of the CCP or any other political party, and Primavera Capital has no ties to any political party in China or any other country."
Yet, the Daily Caller's reporting found that Wu is listed as a director of "Entrepreneur Alliance" for the Western Returned Scholars Association, which is "subordinate to the United Front Work Department, the CCP agency tasked with coordinating influence operations at the operational level," according to the U.S.
"It's concerning that a platform providing services to the U.S. military has close connections to a 'trusted adviser' to the Chinese government," a GOP spokesperson from the House Select Committee on the CCP told the Daily Caller. "This issue warrants further scrutiny."
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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