(Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Michael Pompeo accused U.S. universities of letting China steal American science and technology and stifle criticism in return for funding from Beijing.

“What more bad decisions will schools make because they are hooked on communist cash?” he said Wednesday at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “What professors will they silence? What theft and espionage will they overlook?”

Arguing that the Chinese communist party is “poisoning the well” of U.S. higher education, Pompeo called for “rigorous” oversight of students and scholars from China.

President Donald Trump and his administration are piling pressure on Chinese’s President Xi Jinping and the ruling Communist Party in his final weeks in office before President-elect Joe Biden takes over.

Pompeo accused “left-leaning college campuses” of being rife with anti-Americanism, presenting easy “target audiences for their anti-American messaging.”

“So many of our colleges are basically bought by Beijing,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Pompeo scoffed in a tweet at suggestions he was visiting Georgia because the state is nearing an election for two Senate seats that will decide whether Republicans continue to control the chamber. He said the speech was “planned long before the Georgia runoff.” During his remarks, he said he chose the Georgia campus after another college refused his offer to speak there on the sensitive topic of Chinese influence.

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