WASHINGTON—China has provided over $158 million to U. S. schools for Confucius Institutes to promote Chinese culture, U. S. Senate investigators said on Feb. 27,…
WASHINGTON—China has provided over $158 million to U. S. schools for Confucius Institutes to promote Chinese culture, U. S. Senate investigators said on Feb. 27, releasing a report saying the centers have acted as tightly controlled propaganda arms for Beijing and should be changed or shut down.
The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations spent eight months investigating the Confucius Institutes, which were created in 2004 to promote Chinese language and culture at schools and universities around the world.
But the centers have been criticized, particularly in the United States, for promoting the views of the Chinese Communist party, assertions denied by both the institutes and the government.
The FBI has said it is “watching warily” the Confucius Institutes and the State Department has called them “China’s most powerful soft power platforms,” the investigators found.
The report said the Department of Justice should decide whether any Confucius Institutes or their employees should register as foreign agents.
The Chinese regime said on Feb. 24 that it plans to “optimize” the spread of the institutes and they will remain a key part of government policy.
