State and university actions to close Confucius Institutes amid national security concerns

42 state, stating in a letter addressed to their state’s universities that these organizations “are a threat to our nation’s security by serving as a platform for China’s intelligence collection and political agenda.” They added that, “We have a responsibility to uphold our American values of free expression, and to do whatever is necessary to counter any behavior that poses a threat to our democracy.” The Texas A&M system complied with this request by ordering the closure of all Cls.’* Then, in August 2018, the University of North Florida announced the closure of its CI." Similar calls have been made in other states, and the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act restricts Department of Defense language study funding if a university hosts a Confucius Institute.'* Several other universities (including Dickinson State University in Pennsylvania, the University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton University) that had been contemplated opening CIs, have now decided not to do so. At the same time, Columbia University (and elsewhere) has come under criticism, more for lack of transparency than for its specific violative activities.’ That said, the majority of CIs have so far carried out their mission of language and cultural education without controversy. In 2014, both the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) called on universities to terminate CIs unless their agreements with Hanban were renegotiated to provide for total transparency and compliance with norms of academic freedom." In 2017, the National Association of Scholars (NAS), a politically conservative nonprofit advocacy group,” undertook an exhaustive study of Cls in the United States and produced a 183-page report.'® Echoing the AAUP’s recommendations, the NAS urged closing all ClIs on the basis of four areas of concern: a restriction of intellectual freedom; lack of transparency; “entanglement” (with Chinese party—controlled institutions); and worries about them being used for Chinese “soft power” or pro-PRC propaganda. In addition to the above concerns, some have argued that the fact that CI language programs exclusively use PRC textbooks with “simplified” (or mainland-style) Chinese characters biases the contribution CIs make to Chinese language instruction on American campuses. In our view, this is not a serious problem, since students should learn this vocabulary and this form of written characters, so long as the university also provides the opportunity for students to learn traditional “complex” characters (used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and many diaspora communities) and to learn non-mainland vocabulary. A review of the entire set of Hanban textbooks used by CIs undertaken for this report finds they contain no overt political content. Only in one of six levels of textbook was there a single lesson on US-China relations, and it was a speech by former president Barack Obama, in which he asserted that the United States does not seek to “contain” China. Nor have we found any evidence of interference by Universities HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020501