“Like any international body operating in the UK, Confucius Institutes need to operate transparently and within the law, and with a full commitment to our values,” read a statement from a spokesperson for Keir Starmer’s Labour government that asserted “challenges” posed by Beijing.
Confucius Institutes are Chinese government-backed institutions on international college campuses that dedicate themselves to promoting Chinese culture and supporting the teaching of the Chinese language. The program originated in 2004 with the goal of promoting cultural exchange efforts, but it has drawn scrutiny in recent years as Western governments respond to China’s dramatic economic and diplomatic rise.
A report from the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee last year alleged that Confucius Institutes are “Trojan horses” for Chinese soft power and propaganda. Beijing likens the program to similar Western government–backed organizations dedicated to promoting culture and language abroad, such as the UK’s British Council, Germany’s Goethe-Institut and France’s Alliance Française.
The intelligence committee “found that the [Chinese] organisations are used by the Chinese Government to steer universities from engaging in debates over contentious issues like Tibet and Taiwan,” according to the British Daily Mail tabloid news outlet. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has worked for decades to undermine Chinese governance of Tibet by grooming the Dalai Lama as an pro-Western asset, while the United States has backed separatist forces in Taiwan despite a number of memorandums issued in the 1970s and 80s affirming that Beijing maintains sovereignty over the territory.
A similar controversy over Confucius Institutes has simmered in the United States over the last several years. The US government alleged in 2019 the organizations exercised “undue influence;” the number of Confucius Institutes on US college and university campuses subsequently plummeted from 100 to just five.
The attacks on the program have contributed to a shortage of Chinese language teachers in the United States, threatening cultural ties between the two countries and putting the future of diplomacy between Washington and Beijing in doubt. The United States’ Chinese language interpreter was roundly mocked online after making several major mistakes during a tense US-China summit in Alaska in 2021.
“The United States is running critically low on China expertise,” read a piece in the Washington Post earlier this year. “By most metrics, China studies in the United States is in decline, with fewer American students studying Chinese than before the pandemic and fewer still spending meaningful time in the country. Enrollments in college Mandarin courses peaked around 2016, then fell by more than 20 percent by 2020, according to data from the Modern Language Association.”
“In 2011-2012, 14,887 American college students went abroad to China. By 2018-2019, that number had declined to 11,639, and by 2020-2021, to just 382. Although some colleges have begun to rebuild their programs in China, the pace is cautious and uncertain.”
China is the world’s largest economy as measured by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) since 2017. Western countries have increasingly responded with hostility to the country’s meteoric rise, with US Congress recently passing a raft of anti-China legislation.
“Many of the measures passed with bipartisan support at a time when viewing [China] primarily as a geopolitical rival is one of the few issues both Republicans and Democrats can agree on,” reported NBC News.
The US military is currently in the midst of a major restructuring amid plummeting recruitment rates, with the goal of preparing for an anticipated war with China in the Pacific region.
"The loss of these intellectual fountains of Chinese thought in the US is invisible but tangible. It not only damages the image of US universities but it also weakens the teaching strength of the US education system. However, the growing number of Confucius Institutes globally is undoubtedly seen as a dangerous signal by McCarthyist politicians in the US - any disturbances in China-US relations might put Confucius Institutes under extraordinary risks for their existence," said Yuan Zheng, the director and senior fellow of Division of American Diplomacy Studies, Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy, in 2020.