A new wave of concern has emerged in U.S. political and security circles following public claims by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer that China could be positioning itself to exert long-term influence on American elections and institutions through a combination of birthright citizenship, overseas education, and lawful immigration and investment channels.
Speaking on The Benny Show podcast in January 2026, Schweizer president of the Government Accountability Institute and author of Clinton Cash and Profiles in Corruption said that approximately 100,000 Chinese children are born in the United States each year, acquire U.S. citizenship at birth, and are then taken back to China to be educated in state schools. When they turn 18, he said, they are legally eligible to vote in U.S. elections, donate to political candidates, and seek government employment. Schweizer warned that if the numbers he cited are accurate, the first major cohort would reach voting age around 2030, potentially numbering in the hundreds of thousands over time.
“These individuals are U.S. citizens under American law,” Schweizer said. “But they are raised, educated, and politically shaped in an authoritarian system that openly treats overseas Chinese as assets of the state.”
The claims have intensified scrutiny of birthright citizenship, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to anyone born on U.S. soil, and of so-called “birth tourism,” a practice that U.S. authorities have acknowledged exists and have prosecuted in individual criminal cases. However, U.S. government agencies do not publish comprehensive statistics confirming annual figures at the scale Schweizer cited, and independent estimates over the past decade have varied widely, often placing total birth-tourism numbers across all nationalities well below 100,000 per year. Even critics of the practice acknowledge that hard data is limited, making long-range projections difficult to verify.
What has elevated the debate beyond immigration policy is China’s own stated doctrine. Under Chinese law and party discipline rules, the Chinese Communist Party maintains that Chinese citizens and organisations, wherever they reside, are obligated to assist the state’s intelligence and security work. China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law explicitly requires citizens and entities to “support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.” Western intelligence agencies have repeatedly cited this provision as a core concern when assessing Beijing’s overseas influence operations.
“From the CCP’s perspective, nationality does not end at the border,” said one former U.S. counterintelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “That doesn’t mean every person of Chinese origin is a spy. But it does mean the state claims the right to mobilize them.”
Schweizer also pointed to the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, which grants permanent residency to foreign nationals who invest significant sums in U.S. projects that create jobs. Chinese nationals have historically been among the largest users of the program. He argued that wealthy elites can obtain green cards, maintain substantial ties abroad, and later exert political influence through lawful campaign donations and lobbying once eligible. U.S. election records do show that political donations by naturalised citizens of Chinese origin skew heavily toward Democrats, though experts caution that political preference alone is not evidence of coordinated foreign direction.
U.S. officials emphasise that voting in federal elections requires citizenship and registration, and that campaign donations are governed by strict disclosure and eligibility rules enforced by the Federal Election Commission. Non-citizens are prohibited from donating. At the same time, lawmakers from both parties have acknowledged that foreign influence operations increasingly exploit legal gray zones, long timelines, and open societies rather than overtly illegal acts.
China has rejected accusations of orchestrating demographic or political manipulation abroad, calling them “Cold War thinking.” Yet Beijing has simultaneously expanded programs aimed at “guiding” overseas Chinese communities, students, and businesspeople, and has publicly celebrated the political and economic success of ethnic Chinese abroad as part of China’s “national rejuvenation.”
No U.S. intelligence agency has publicly endorsed Schweizer’s numerical projections or characterised birthright citizens raised in China as a coordinated voting bloc. Still, the debate has reignited calls in Congress for tighter oversight of birth tourism networks, reforms to the EB-5 program, and a reassessment of how U.S. law intersects with authoritarian states that openly claim influence over their nationals overseas.
As the 2030s approach, the controversy underscores a deeper anxiety: that influence in modern geopolitics may not arrive through armies or espionage alone, but through citizenship laws, education systems, and Time tools that operate quietly, legally, and over generations.
