China’s Confucius Institutes are disappearing from US campuses

Almost all the China-funded Confucius Institutes in the US have closed, a new report found, highlighting how soured ties between Beijing and Washington have led US universities to abandon what was once seen as a cheap way to offer Chinese classes.

All but five of the institutes, which were created in 2004 to promote Chinese language, are now closed, the Government Accountability Office said.

That is compared with 2019, when the GAO found 96 Confucius Institutes operating in 44 states. At the time, only six states had no colleges or universities with the centres.

The decision tracks with a sharp spike in tension between the US and China dating to the Trump administration that’s seen a rise in export-controls, sanctions, tariffs and repeated diplomatic incidents.

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US education says no to Chinese resources

US education says no to Chinese resources

The two sides are only just beginning to try to get ties back on track, and US President Joe Biden is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at an Apec summit in San Francisco later this month.

Trump administration officials initiated attacks on the Confucius Institutes. The main reason that US colleges abandoned them was language in the 2019 and 2021 defence authorisation bills that warned schools could lose federal funding if they kept the institutes, according to Kimberly Gianopoulos, the director of International Affairs and Trade at the GAO.

“There were statements in those pieces of legislation, which basically said, ‘OK, higher-learning institutions, if you’re receiving money from the PRC to support these Confucius Institutes, then you are at risk of losing federal funding for research that’s happening on your campuses,’” Gianopoulos said, referring to China by its formal name, the People’s Republic of China.

As tensions with China ratcheted up, US lawmakers from both sides of the aisle zeroed in on the Confucius Institutes, saying they were a tool in the Communist Party’s effort to exert sway – or at least burnish its image – around the world.

US Senate backs bill to clamp down on China-funded Confucius Institutes

The institutes taught classes in Chinese culture and language and were run by their host university faculty and administrators with assistance from faculty at Chinese partner universities.

In 2019, FBI Director Christopher Wray called them “a source of concern” and said the bureau viewed them as “more a part of China’s soft power strategy and influence”.

More than 60 per cent of school administrators said that “to a great extent” they viewed the potential loss of federal funding as the reason for closing the institutes. Gianopoulos said the number of Confucius Institutes would probably be down to “one or two by the time 2024 rolls around”.

“They’re really going away,” she said.

Congressman Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has called the institutes places where China’s government can monitor and influence the behaviour of Chinese students in the US.

Expressing concern about reports that the institutes were reopening under different names, he said the closings do not mean the Chinese Communist Party is giving up on trying to influence American higher education.

“Instead, we’ve seen the CCP ratchet up efforts to steal American research, and continue to coerce critical voices to toe the Communist Party line,” Moulton said.

“Whatever they are called, US universities need to adopt structural reforms that ensure that the CCP is unable to infiltrate, influence, and undermine American higher education.”