A report by Strategy Risks examines Michigan State University’s dual-degree program with the Communication University of China and documents the Chinese partners’ links to Party communications work, military-affiliated training, and laboratories focused on media, AI and public opinion.
MSU’s International Digital Advertising dual-degree is taught partly at the Communication University of China (CUC), where students take required political courses alongside advertising coursework.
A Strategy Risks report documents CUC institutions that identify political and ideological missions and that host laboratories working on media convergence, AI and public-opinion analysis.
CUC hosted PLA National Defense University delegations and ran commissioned training for military personnel on cultural theory, creative thinking and international communication.
Michigan State University's International Digital Advertising program operates as a dual-degree track with the Communication University of China (CUC). Students spend their first year at CUC's Hainan International College and complete the second year at MSU in East Lansing. MSU's catalog lists specific credit splits: 28 credits at CUC and 18 credits at MSU for the dual-degree path.
Required Chinese courses extend beyond professional advertising subjects. Strategy Risks highlights compulsory subjects at CUC such as "Research on the Theory and Practice of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" and "Marxism and the Methodology of Social Science." Those courses sit alongside the advertising and digital media curriculum offered to MSU students.
CUC's institutional role and research labs
CUC describes itself in institutional materials as having an explicit political mission tied to Party communications and cultural work. The university hosts the National Key Laboratory of Media Convergence and Communication and the National Public Opinion Laboratory. According to the Strategy Risks report, those centers work on artificial intelligence, data and media analysis, and they list protecting "ideological security and political security in the media field" among their objectives.
These collaborations continued into 2025 with additional commissioned training weeks for military-college personnel. Strategy Risks also notes physical proximity: a new CUC facility is expected to house the MSU-CUC program alongside the laboratories that have hosted military-linked delegations.
What the report does and does not allege
Strategy Risks explicitly states it is not alleging that Michigan State knowingly supports Chinese military or propaganda objectives. The report frames its concern as institution-level: a conventional international communications degree can operate inside a broader Chinese institutional network that includes Party communications and military-linked training.
The report stops short of finding direct transfers of MSU teaching to military use. Available evidence cited by the report does not demonstrate that MSU coursework or students were repurposed for PLA activity. The central question the report raises is whether U.S. universities fully evaluate the downstream institutional networks connected to their foreign partners and where taught communications expertise could circulate.
Practical implications for stakeholders
For university administrators: consider mapping partner institutions' research centers and external affiliations, and review curricular overlap with politically framed or military-connected programs.
For policymakers and researchers: the report provides a case study for assessing how academic partnerships intersect with state-affiliated research centers and military education programs, without making claims about deliberate wrongdoing by the U.S. partner.
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