“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.” So wrote Sun Tzu, the legendary ancient Chinese general who authored The Art of War. If a new report by a conservative education advocacy group is correct, the Asian communist superpower is conducting this age-old strategy today with its Confucius Institutes embedded in US colleges. Though Confucius Institutes in America have been closing, it seems they’re stealthily being replaced by new programs that do precisely the same thing.
“Confucius Institutes, in any form, have no place in the United States,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) asserted in a statement to the Washington Examiner published June 27. “For years, Communist China has been using Confucius Institutes as a Trojan Horse to influence American education, and it is no surprise they are attempting to sneak in other alternatives to spread their propaganda. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has chosen to abet the CCP’s power quest to exploit our students by rescinding the rule that requires schools to disclose their relationship with Confucius Institutes and terminating a [Justice Department] program that targets CCP educational espionage.”
Sleight of Hand
According to the June report by the National Association of Scholars, China has been shuttering its Confucius Institutes on American campuses and then replacing them with new programs meant to perform the same pro-regime duties.
“Of 118 Confucius Institutes that once existed in the United States, 104 have closed or are in the process of doing so,” the report states, citing ramped-up pressure from various federal and state agencies as the reason.
Far from being cowed by the increased scrutiny, however, NAS says the Chinese have enacted an “an all-of-the-above approach to protecting its spheres of influence on American higher education.” Specifically, the report says:
“Many once-defunct Confucius Institutes have since reappeared in other forms.
- 28 institutions have replaced (and 12 have sought to replace) their closed Confucius Institute with a similar program.
- 58 have maintained (and 5 may have maintained) close relationships with their former CI partner.
- 5 have (and 3 may have) transferred their Confucius Institute to a new host, thereby keeping the CI alive.
- The single most popular reason institutions give when they close a CI is to replace it with a new Chinese partnership program.”
It takes two to tango. The above numbers not only show China’s avidity to influence US higher education but the eagerness of American universities to enter into the bloody regime’s orbit.
The levels of duplicity that NAS reveals by major American universities is disturbing. Take the saga of the University of Washington, starring Bill Gates:
“We recount the origin of the University of Washington’s Confucius Institute in a meeting between then Washington Governor Christine Gregoire and then Chinese President Hu Jintao at Bill Gates’ house in 2006, and how the CI developed unusually close relationships with corporations including Microsoft.
The Confucius Institute relied on a third-party ‘fiscal agent,’ shielding the University of Washington from federal transparency laws. The University of Washington, since severing ties with its Confucius Institute in order to maintain federal funding, not only transferred the Confucius Institute to Pacific Lutheran University but also sought legal loopholes that would permit it to re-establish ties with the Confucius Institute.”
(Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images)
A prominent university in America’s heartland has also gone to great lengths to keep its tight ties to China intact. “Purdue University built a number of partnerships with Shanghai Jiaotong University, some of which have survived the closure of its Confucius Institute,” the report’s executive summary reads. “In a move echoed at many other universities, Purdue also moved many of its CI programs into other units at the university, directed by the former CI director but less traceable by the public.”
Biden Abides
As Liberty Nation noted in December 2020, former President Barack Obama and his vice president, current White House occupant Joe Biden, played a critical role in expanding China’s footprint on American campuses:
“A 2015 Foreign Policy article reported that ‘[t]he number of Chinese international students has increased nearly fivefold since the 2004-2005 academic year, when there were 62,523 Chinese students stateside.’…
Biden himself specifically encouraged the escalation on multiple occasions. In a 2011 speech at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, he said that ‘more than 130 [sic – should be 130,000] students from China attended our universities last year. We’re hoping that number will be even larger.’
In a 2011 address at the opening session of the U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue in Washington, he said that ‘last year, 130,000 Chinese were studying in the United States. They’re really good. We’re going to try to keep some of them. I’m only joking. I’m only joking. But they are.’”
All those students mean a lot of money for universities. And when it comes to choosing between hard cash and national security concerns, guess which side academia keeps turning to?
(Photo by: Robert Knopes/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“Under federal law, institutions of higher education are required to disclose publicly any foreign donations exceeding $250,000,” the Washington Examiner relates. “The law, Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, went largely unenforced for decades before efforts by the Education Department under the Trump administration forced numerous institutions to amend their disclosures.”
“But since the presidential transition in January 2021, the issue has largely fallen out of focus for the Education Department under the Biden administration.”
“Higher education lobbyists have opposed provisions in the Innovation Act that would lower the reporting threshold. They argue this would substantially increase the burden of reporting for institutions, as well as for the Department of Education,” Inside Higher Ed stated in a June 3 article. The site quotes philanthropy scholar Doug White on the dangers of such a position: “White said one reason foreign donation transparency is so important for higher education institutions is because there’s a ‘revolving door’ between academia and politics, think tanks and industries that have a hand in the country’s governance.”
“There is a national interest to be sure that money coming from foreign sources doesn’t infiltrate power policy making in the United States,” White says. “The origin of the money and how it was spent – these things need to be known to the public, not just internally.”
