Good Monday evening. This is Daniel Allott with The Hill's Top Opinions.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is infiltrating U.S. universities through its strategic placement of Confucius Institutes throughout the country, writes former Undersecretary of Defense Dov S. Zakheim.
Confucius Institutes, operating in 160 countries, are ostensibly about offering language and cultural programs. But in reality they act as an arm of the CCP and thus should be closed, according to Zakheim.
"They are handmaidens of the government in Beijing, serving as vehicles for Chinese espionage and propaganda."
Other countries have already shut down Confucius Institutes operating within their borders. "Concern that the Institutes engaged in activities more closely akin to espionage than to cultural promotion prompted the Nordic countries to take the lead in shutting them down," Zakheim writes. The United Kingdom may soon follow suit.
There used to be more than 100 Institutes at or near American universities. Now there are just 16, but there is evidence that some may have reopened under other names.
The Biden administration has put financial pressure on universities to disassociate from Confucius Institutes. But Zakheim, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes more ought to be done.
He writes, "Congress should deny any form of federal funding — not only to those colleges and universities that continue to work with the Institutes, but also to those that work with programs bearing different names that essentially preserve the Institutes' presence and influence on campuses."
The Institutes, Zakheim believes, "should be frozen out of American academia once and for all."
Read Zakheim's op-ed here.
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