The institutes are exposed as the long arm of the CCP to infiltrate American universities and spread “propaganda and malign influence.”
by Massimo Introvigne
On August 13, according to an official press statement, the Department of State designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center as “a foreign mission of China.” The statement explained that the U.S. is recognizing Confucius Institute “for what it is: an entity advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K-12 classrooms. Confucius Institutes are funded by the PRC and part of the Chinese Communist Party’s global influence and propaganda apparatus.”
“The goal of these actions, the Department of State explained, is simple: to ensure that American educators and school administrators can make informed choices about whether these CCP-backed programs should be allowed to continue, and if so, in what fashion. Universities around the country and around the world are examining the Confucius Institutes’ curriculum and the scope of Beijing’s influence in their education systems. The United States wants to ensure that students on U.S. campuses have access to Chinese language and cultural offerings free from the manipulation of the Chinese Communist Party and its proxies.”
In the U.S. roughly 100 Confucius Institutes are currently operating. The decision by the Department of State does not shut them down, but places the institutes under surveillance, and certainly encourages American universities to terminate relationships with them. It is expected that the U.S. will also ask other countries to limit the activities of the Confucius Institutes, which have been denounced for years as United Front tools for influencing and corrupting academics and manipulating students under the pretext of teaching Chinese language and culture.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
