UNITED STATES
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Trump moves to ramp up scrutiny of Confucius Institutes

The Trump administration is ramping up its scrutiny of Confucius Institutes as part of its broader concern that the Chinese Communist Party is using American university campuses to engage in espionage, spread propaganda and promote censorship.

The US State Department on 13 August required the Washington-based Confucius Institute US Center (CIUS) to register as a foreign mission, a designation that requires that the organisation regularly provide information to the State Department about its personnel, recruiting, funding and operations in the United States. Several Chinese media outlets in June received a similar designation, which defines them as “substantially owned or effectively controlled” by a foreign government.

CIUS describes itself on its website as a registered US non-profit organisation that promotes a network of Confucius Institutes, which typically sponsor educational, language and cultural programmes. A US State Department statement said the new designation is “recognising CIUS for what it is: an entity advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign”.

“For more than four decades, Beijing has enjoyed free and open access to US society, while denying that same access to Americans and other foreigners in China,” US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said in a statement. The People’s Republic of China “has taken advantage of America’s openness to undertake large scale and well-funded propaganda efforts and influence operations in this country”.

The Global Times, an English-language newspaper published in China, which is owned by the Communist Party of China’s mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, dismissed the move as part of President Donald Trump’s re-election effort “to play the ‘China card’ to shift domestic problems to win votes”.

It is one in a string of actions taken this summer by the US government to tighten national security policy around higher education and research with regard to its increasingly strained relationship with China.

In a letter this month addressed to US university governing boards, a State Department official warns of “a real and urgent threat that has broad implications”, and urges boards to, among other things, publicly disclose and divest any endowment investments in People’s Republic of China firms that the US government lists as contributing to human rights violations and protect intellectual property.

The Justice Department over the summer announced multiple criminal actions against Chinese researchers, including professors at Texas A&M University, the University of Arkansas and the University of California, Davis, and an Indiana University graduate student, on charges ranging from wire fraud and passport fraud to hiding ties to the Chinese government.

In July Trump ordered his administration to “take steps to terminate the Fulbright exchange programme” for participants travelling in either direction between the United States and China or Hong Kong.

In addition, a Senate committee on homeland security is considering a bill, dubbed the Safeguarding American Innovation Act, which, among other things, would give the State Department broader discretion over the criteria it uses to determine whether to deny entry into the United States.

Confucius Institutes

CIUS confirmed on 13 August that it was asked to designate a point of contact and provide information about the office space it leases in Washington, DC. In a statement posted on its website, it agreed to comply, but added: “We know there are a lot of pressing issues between our two countries – Confucius Institutes are not one of them and we are working hard to keep it that way.”

In a follow-up letter to US officials, CIUS Executive Director Gao Qing wrote: “Although we respectfully disagree with that designation, we also view it as an opportunity to open an avenue of communication between CIUS and the Department of State which is something we have long sought.”

All but 10 of the 75 Confucius Institutes in the United States are located on a university campus, the US government says. The CIUS designation does not force universities to close a Confucius Institute, but an estimated 45 US colleges had previously closed the Confucius Institute on their campuses, many of them in response to a law passed by Congress in 2018 that bars colleges that host Confucius Institutes from receiving Defense Department funding for language programmes it sponsors.

Among those recently shutting down are Confucius Institutes at Arizona State University, the University of Oregon, Western Kentucky University and Indiana University.

Pompeo said the US government continues to support language training but the change in CIUS status is designed to “ensure that American educators and school administrators can make informed choices about whether these ... programmes should be allowed to continue, and if so, in what fashion”.

Confucius Institutes around the world have come under scrutiny. In May Sweden closed its last remaining Confucius Institute, citing an increasingly strained relationship with China, including the jailing last November of a Chinese-born Swedish citizen who published criticisms of Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping.

The University of Hamburg in Germany is expected to cut ties with its Confucius Institute by the end of this year, according to news reports; German daily newspaper Die Welt cited risks associated with “political influence and information leak” for the decision.

A Belgian university in December said it would end its contract with the Confucius Institute, just months after Belgian authorities banned the head of the campus-based office from re-entering the country for national security purposes.

China’s Ministry of Education said in July that the Confucius Institute Headquarters had changed its name to the Ministry of Education Centre for Language Education and Cooperation as part of a rebranding campaign.

A report by the South China Morning Post quoted the deputy director and Communist Party secretary of the renamed centre in an online post saying that China “particularly hopes to expand cooperation with relevant institutions in the US and jointly build a more focused, pragmatic and efficient new model for China-US language exchanges, and strive to contribute to the promotion of China-US cultural exchanges and mutual understanding between the people of the two countries”.

US State Department Assistant Secretary David R Stilwell told reporters in an August briefing that the Chinese government “did change the names, but the activity hasn’t changed”.

Li Haidong, a professor of international relations at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times that Chinese branches of US universities may face increased scrutiny as a result of the designation. New York University and Duke University are among the most prominent US branch campuses in China.

Universities’ response

US universities have in general opposed much of Trump’s approach to higher education initiatives and enrolments involving China, as well as recent congressional efforts.

Anticipating greater scrutiny after the passage of the Defense Department spending bill, American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell in 2018 urged member presidents whose universities sponsor a Confucius Institute, about 96 at the time, to “complete a comprehensive evaluation” of its programme, including “a determination of whether [its] activities ... are in full compliance with your institution’s policies on academic freedom”.

He also recommended modifying and making public its written agreements with the Chinese government.

In July, a letter from the president of the council and the presidents of three other major groups – the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and the Association of American Medical Colleges – raised concerns about portions of the Senate bill under consideration, including key provisions it said “are overly broad and would harm American science and international collaboration without improving national security”.

An even broader coalition of associations, led by the council, raised additional concerns, including the language used in the bill, stating that US entry could be denied “based on a suspicion of activity rather than any actual violation of the law”.

In addition to the potential for discouraging students and scholars with legitimate interests in a broad range of fields, they warned that “other countries would move to reciprocate, denying entry to any US citizen seeking to enter based on the same criteria”.

The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges received the letter and shared the “essence of the [State Department] letter” with key members, its president, Henry Stoever, said. It stated “nothing new ... it simply highlighted four areas” considered by most governing boards to be routine practice in terms of their risk oversight responsibilities. The recommendations are “good reminders”, Stoever said.