Chair Cassidy, Colleagues Call for Investigation to Protect American Students from CCP Influence

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Jon Husted (R-OH), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) raised concerns over the Chinese tutoring company, TAL Education Group (TAL), acquiring ownership of Epic! Creations (Epic), an educational tool used by millions of American students. The senators asked U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, chair of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), to initiate a review of TAL's acquisition of Epic to ensure protection of Americans' private data from foreign adversaries like Communist China.

"We believe that this acquisition by TAL, which is subject to Chinese data laws that grant broad access of user data to the CCP, represents a significant threat to American children and educational sovereignty," wrote the senators. "We cannot now allow China to make inroads into our elementary school systems to indoctrinate a young generation of American students."

Read the full letter here or below:

Dear Secretary Bessent,

We write to you regarding the protection of the personal data of millions of American students who use Epic! Creations' (Epic) education tools. Earlier this year, Epic was sold in bankruptcy proceedings to TAL Education Group (TAL), a prominent Chinese holding company that is headquartered in Beijing. We believe that this acquisition by TAL, which is subject to Chinese data laws that grant broad access of user data to the CCP, represents a significant threat to American children and educational sovereignty. We urge you to initiate a review of TAL's acquisition of Epic by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and, if a CFIUS review is or has been conducted, we request that you brief us on that review.

As a Chinese company, TAL is subject to China's National Intelligence Law and Data Security Law, meaning that TAL's assets and data are at the disposal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This raises serious data privacy concerns. We should not allow adversarial foreign governments to access the private data of any American citizen, much less that of our nation's children. Data privacy concerns have justified actions by CFIUS in the past, including forced divestitures of Grindr and Beijing Kunlun Tech in 2019¹, StayNTouch and Shiji in 2020², and iCarbonX and PatientsLikeMe in 2019³. TAL's acquisition of Epic should undergo similar scrutiny.

In addition to these data privacy concerns, we fear that allowing TAL to have editorial control of Epic's vast digital library will turn this useful learning tool into a CCP influence operation directed at American children. Epic's 40,000 books, videos, and quizzes are trusted educational resources and utilized by students and teachers in 94 percent of American elementary schools. At a time when parents are calling for and deserve a voice in their children's education curriculum, all risks to potential CCP influence on educational tools must be investigated.

The United States has repeatedly confronted influence operations directed by the Chinese Communist Party. Over the past several years, America has cracked down on China's influence in our nation's colleges and universities by shutting down dozens of Confucius Institutes. We cannot now allow China to make inroads into our elementary school systems to indoctrinate a young generation of American students.

Due to the serious concerns this transaction poses to the data of millions of American children and our educational sovereignty, we request that you, as chair of CFIUS, initiate a review of TAL's acquisition of Epic. If that review has begun or concluded, we ask that you provide the undersigned Senators with a briefing on that review's status and findings. If such a review has not yet begun, we respectfully request the following information:

1. Has CFIUS initiated a review of this transaction, given its clear implications on national security as it contains U.S. students' personal data and enables CCP access to U.S. education infrastructure?
2. 1. If not, why? And what other steps can be taken to protect our future workforce from CCP influence and data privacy that may occur from this sale?
3. What categories of personal data on U.S. students does Epic collect, and to what extent is that data now accessible to TAL or other entities under CCP jurisdiction?
4. 1. To what extent could TAL, and by extension the CCP, exercise editorial influence or content control over Epic's digital library?
5. Are there legal and/or contractual safeguards in existence to prevent TAL or CCP authorities from altering, censoring, or curating content within Epic's library in ways that could be perceived as constituting CCP propaganda?
6. What mechanisms exist for ongoing monitoring of TAL's compliance with any data protection or content-neutrality commitments, if the transaction proceeds?

In light of the sensitive nature of CFIUS deliberations, we stand prepared to arrange a classified briefing on this matter at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for your attention to this request, we appreciate your efforts to protect American students and our education system.

Sincerely,

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