Source: NYT (8/13/20)
U.S. Labels Chinese Language Education Group a Diplomatic Mission
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State Department officials said the move was aimed at informing American schools of potential propaganda from the government group’s programs, largely known as Confucius Institutes.
By Edward Wong
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration was seeking “fair and reciprocal treatment” from the Chinese government on creating open access to educational resources. Credit…T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times.
WASHINGTON — The State Department announced on Thursday that it was designating the U.S. headquarters of a Chinese government educational organization as a diplomatic mission, in the latest action by the Trump administration to limit official operations by China in the United States.
The headquarters, called the Confucius Institute U.S. Center, in Washington, manages and provides funding for Chinese-language teachers and classes across the country. The university-level classes are operated out of 75 entities called Confucius Institutes, and the kindergarten through 12th-grade classes are run out of 500 entities called Confucius Classrooms.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that the Trump administration had made the decision in order to “seek fair and reciprocal treatment” from the Chinese government on creating open access to educational resources. He said the label would also help educational administrators across the country determine whether to continue their relationship with the programs, especially because the administrative organization in Beijing has ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
He said China “has taken advantage of America’s openness to undertake large-scale and well-funded propaganda efforts and influence operations in this country.”
The State Department’s move is part of a flurry of actions against China since the spring that administration officials characterize as “reciprocity.” Among other things, the United States shut down a Chinese diplomatic mission in Houston, banned some students with Chinese military ties from traveling to the United States and designated major Chinese state-run media organizations as diplomatic entities, while forcing out about 60 Chinese journalists and shortening the visas of many others.
Those journalists had to apply for a visa renewal by last week, and because they have gotten no word yet from the Department of Homeland Security, the assumption for now is they can stay for another 90 days.
Campaign strategists for President Trump, who has often praised China’s authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping, have urged him to look tough on China for re-election purposes. At the same time, national security hawks in the administration want to set the nations on a long-term course of confrontation that would be difficult to change even if Mr. Trump loses in November.
The designation of the headquarters of the Confucius Institutes does not mean the American educational institutions that host the programs need to shut them down. As with the newly designated media organizations, the headquarters will now be required to give the State Department lists of employees and property holdings, as well as information on all the institutes and centers it runs.
Sixty-five of the Confucius Institutes in the United States are hosted on a university campus, and the rest are stand-alone programs. Universities have found that the programs are an easy and inexpensive way for them to get resources to teach the Mandarin Chinese language.
However, in recent years, American teachers and administrators have debated whether teachers in the Confucius Institutes or their educational material help disseminate Chinese government propaganda. In 2014, the University of Chicago ended its contract with the Confucius Institutes, and several other universities have done the same since. As a result, the number of institutes has dropped from above 100 at their peak.
Republican lawmakers, notably Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who promotes aggressive policies against China, have urged American schools to break ties with the institutes.
A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said on Friday that the institutes had been following the law and that the U.S. crackdown demonized and stigmatized the program.
A 2018 report on Chinese government and Communist Party influence operations in the United States done by the Hoover Institution and the Asia Society had details on the work and structure of the Confucius Institutes. It said the organization in Beijing that oversees the institutes, the Hanban, which is under the Education Ministry, has ties to the Communist Party’s Central Committee. The Hanban typically gives a $150,000 start-up grant to an American university, with grants of $100,000 and $200,000 per year afterward, the report said. It gives $50,000 in initial funding to secondary schools and $15,000 per year afterward.
“Most troublesome are two provisions in the Hanban contracts with U.S. host institutions: One forbids the C.I.s from conducting any activities that contravene Chinese law, while the other requires that the enabling contract remains confidential, making oversight by the academic community difficult,” the report said.
In summarizing its findings on the programs, the report said that “because C.I.s have had positive value in exposing students and communities to Chinese language and culture, this report does not generally oppose them. But it does recommend that more rigorous university oversight and standards of academic freedom and transparency be exercised over C.I.s.”
Outside the Confucius Institutes, many teachers and students of the Mandarin Chinese language at American universities have for decades used textbooks from mainland Chinese publishers that have lessons with overt government or party propaganda. American teachers and students have rarely objected to the material. For many university students, it has been easy to tell that the material is propaganda.
In a telephone call with reporters, David R. Stilwell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said on Thursday that the U.S. government would work with American educational institutions with a goal of “looking for other opportunities for Chinese language training and instruction,” but he did not give details.
“We think at this point,” he added, “it’s even more important that Americans study Chinese language, understand Chinese culture and work to establish a truly reciprocal relationship on both sides of the Pacific.”