US Requires Confucius Institute Center to Register as Foreign Mission

The United States said on Thursday it was requiring the center that manages Chinese government-funded Confucius Institutes in the United States to register as a foreign mission, the latest sign of deteriorating relations between Washington and Beijing.

U.S. Secretary of State 👤Mike Pompeo, in a statement, labeled the Confucius Institute U.S. Center in Washington “an entity advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K-12 classrooms.”

David Stilwell, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, told a briefing the dozens of Confucius Institutes in the United States were not being kicked out, but said U.S. universities should take a “hard look” at what they were doing on campus.

Academic exchanges needed to take place without government intrusion, Stilwell said.

Pompeo said the goal of the move was to ensure American schools “can make informed choices about whether these CCP (Chinese Communist Party)-backed programs should be allowed to continue, and if so, in what fashion.”

“The United States wants to ensure that students on U.S. campuses have access to Chinese language and cultural offerings free from the manipulation of the Chinese Communist Party and its proxies,” he said.

Pompeo said the Trump administration had made it a priority to seek fair and reciprocal treatment from China and Beijing had enjoyed free and open access to U.S. society while denying that same access to Americans and other foreigners in China.

Last year, the U.S. State and Education Departments promised stricter monitoring of the institutes, which have been criticized in Congress and elsewhere as de facto propaganda arms of China’s Communist government.

In June, the State Department announced it would start treating four major Chinese media outlets as foreign embassies, calling them mouthpieces for Beijing.