President Trump to De-fund Over 100 Chinese Communist Party ‘Confucius Institutes’ in America

Grace Gottschling an investigative reporter for Campus Reform writes in an article titled “Trump to sign Confucius Institute funding ban“,

President Trump is about to sign the new National Defense Authorization Act, which will prohibit funding to Chinese-run Confucius Institutes on American campuses.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz added the key amendment to “The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019,” which also restricts funding to universities that host Confucius Institutes and requires them to provide a public record of any agreements or contracts they have with the program, which has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

“The Confucius Institutes are the velvet glove around the iron fist of their campaigns on our campuses.”   Tweet This

Earlier this week, the White House confirmed that Trump plans to sign the bill during a visit to Fort Drum, New York, according to Fox-28.

In March, the Central Intelligence Agency issued a classified report labeling the institutes as a threat, according to an unclassified page of the document obtained by The Washington Free Beacon.

“The [Chinese Communist Party] provides ‘strings-attached’ funding to academic institutions and think tanks to deter research that casts it in a negative light,” the unclassified portion of the report reads. “It has used this tactic to reward pro-China viewpoints and coerce Western academic publications and conferences to self-censor. The CCP often denies visas to academics who criticize the regime, encouraging many China scholars to preemptively self-censor so they can maintain access to the country on which their research depends.”

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) in an April 9, 2018 article titled “How Many Confucius Institutes Are in the United States?” by Rachelle Peterson reports:

Image Credit: Kreeder13 CC BY-SA 4.0

Updated July 18, 2018. This list, originally published in March 2018, will be updated periodically. If you know of additional Confucius Institutes that have opened or closed, please let us know at contact@nas.org. 

Since 2004, the Chinese government has sponsored Confucius Institutes on college and university campuses around the world. An agency of the Chinese Ministry of Education, called the Hanban, provides teachers, textbooks, and operating funds.

In April 2017, the National Association of Scholars released Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education, a comprehensive report on the way the Chinese government infiltrates American colleges and universities to enhance its own image. At that time, we counted 103 Confucius Institutes in the United States.

As of July 2018, NAS counts a total of 107 Confucius Institutes in the United States. We identify 100 Confucius Institutes at American colleges and universities. We also identify 1 Confucius Institute at a private educational organization, the China Institute, and 6 Confucius Institutes at K-12 public school districts.*

Our count differs from that of the Hanban, which lists 110 Confucius Institutes in the US. However, the Hanban includes two Confucius Institutes that have since closed: Pfeiffer University, the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, and the University of West Florida. It also includes one that never opened: Dickinson State University. Finally, the Hanban’s list omits two Confucius Institutes that opened in 2017: Baruch University and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

*Most K-12 schools that partner with the Hanban have “Confucius Classrooms,” of which there are about 500 in the United States. However, the Hanban does designate these six school districts as home to Confucius Institutes as part of a collaboration between the Hanban and the College Board.

Download the NAS chart of the current Confucius Institutes in the United States.

Download NAS chart of US-based Confucius Institutes that closed. 

EDITORS NOTE: Here are the Confucius Institutes in Florida.

University of South Florida
Qingdao
University FL President Judy Genshaft
cvisot@usf.edu
http://global.usf.edu/confucius/College/university

Miami Dade College
Jiangsu Normal
University FL President Eduardo J. Padrón
epadron@mdc.edu
http://www.mdc.edu/mdcglobal/ci/College/university

University of North Florida
Shaanxi Normal
University FL President John Delaney
tom.serwatka@unf.edu
http://www.unf.edu/confucius/College/university

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