As President Joe Biden‘s administration coddles Chinese Communist Party-controlled Confucius Institutes, the propaganda centers at American educational facilities are rebranding themselves.
The American Security Institute studied Confucius Institutes and found that more than 100 “Confucius classrooms,” which have embedded themselves into K-12 and university education, now call themselves the Asia Society Chinese Language Partner Network, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
“Confucius Institutes are trying to repackage themselves—same old wine, brand new bottle,” said Will Coggin, managing director of the American Security Institute.
Rachelle Peterson, an expert at the National Association of Scholars, said the Chinese government has directed Confucius Institutes to close their doors so that schools let down their guard.
“Most [Confucius Institute] ‘closures’ result in the opening of a new China center, which retains at least some of the Confucius Institute staff,” she said.
Former president Donald Trump made an aggressive effort to expel Confucius Institutes from the United States. Confucius Institute branches on university campuses declined from 103 to 51 during his tenure.
The Biden administration scrapped a Trump-backed rule that required Confucius Institutes to report their educational and financial ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Coggin criticized Biden for letting the CCP influence American education without detection.
“Biden should focus on increasing transparency about Chinese operations in the U.S.,” he said. “Whether that’s about universities or somewhere else, I think there’s areas where we’d want to have more sunlight.”
The Confucius Institute’s rebranding and the Biden administration’s support for the CCP will make it more difficult for parents, teachers and students to recognize and root out propaganda.
Hanban, or the Office of Chinese Language Council International, directly funds Confucius Institutes, though it merely acts as a pass-through organization for the CCP’s control.
Hanban has spent more than $100 million to keep the institutes afloat.
Grade schools and universities have not expelled the Confucius Institutes because cannot support independent programs to teach students about Chinese language and culture.
The CCP-sponsored language and culture programs come at the price of intellectual and moral independence, as The Confucius Institute bans discussions of China’s tyrannical government and its national atrocities.
