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Introduction

Confucius Institutes (CIs) are Chinese government-funded centers whose purpose is to improve the worldwide opinion of China by offering classes in Mandarin Chinese and highlighting positive aspects of Chinese culture. CIs are modeled on similar cultural programs, such as those of the UK’s British Council, Germany’s Goethe Institutes, and France’s Alliance Française (CRS, 2022). While these European public diplomacy initiatives serve as models, one significant difference is that these programs do not bear the stamp of any one British, German, or French political party. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), via the Chinese International Education Foundation (formerly Hanban), designs and oversees the CI initiative (Sahlins, 2014). The CCP views education, even in China, more as a means for economic development and power projection than, as in the U.S.’s conception, for the creation and transmission of knowledge and skills that improve individual well-being and benefit society as a whole (Brady, 2017; Mosher, 2012).¹

China’s first CI opened in Seoul’s Gangnam District in 2004, followed by its first U.S.-based CI later that year at the University of Maryland, College Park. Eventually, the program grew to enroll more than 9 million students at 548 institutions in 146 countries,² including 121 institutions in the United States.

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¹ The committee wants to state upfront that when referring to China, this report is referring to the People’s Republic of China, the State, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and not to its people, many of whom are invaluable contributors to the global scientific enterprise (Albert et al., 2021). The CCP has more than 96 million members as of 2021, while China’s total population is more than 1.4 billion people (Rui, 2022; World Bank, 2022).

² See https://www.heritage.org/homeland-security/commentary/confucius-institutes-Chinas-trojan-horse.

Most U.S.-based CIs were on college and university campuses, including those of state flagship institutions, private schools, and historically Black colleges and universities.

At their peak, a number of U.S.-based CIs did not offer credit-bearing courses to enrolled students; rather, they focused on education for part-time learners and offered K–12 programs through the related Confucius Classrooms program. Confucius Classrooms provide curriculum guides, textbooks, technology, and teachers for U.S. children, including children in distressed school districts who could not otherwise study Chinese. Given its focus on CIs at institutes of higher education, this report does not explore Confucius Classrooms in further detail; however, the committee acknowledges the program’s existence, audience, and impacts within the context of discussing CIs (Green-Riley, 2020).

At the outset, a Chinese government agency called Hanban, which was affiliated with China’s Ministry of Education and led by Vice Minister Xu Lin, promoted and managed CIs. The original Hanban model called for China to provide seed money for CIs that foreign host institutions would match. Over time, Chinese financial support was supposed to be phased out as CIs became self-sustaining, but this rarely happened. In the United States and most other countries, local directors hired by the host university as employees in faculty or staff roles managed the CIs (GAO, 2019). These individuals worked in consultation with Chinese instructors approved and dispatched by Chinese partner schools.

Most CI cultural programs have been described as apolitical by design, but they do advance a heavily curated view of China. They focus on Chinese visual and performing arts, aesthetics, uncontroversial if selective aspects of the distant past, and the beauty of China’s landscapes. They do not offer in-depth courses on Confucianism or cultural criticism, nor do they engage in direct political indoctrination. The CI program’s Chinese designers may know of American political and ideological concerns and may not want to threaten their primary language programs by defending, for example, China’s claims in the South China Sea, its currency policies, or its human rights practices. Hanban’s general approach is to build China’s soft power by presenting China to foreign publics simply as an unthreatening developing nation with rich traditions (Ren, 2012).

Despite this programmatic caution, there were early signs that CCP practices pervaded China’s global oversight of CIs. The most striking evidence of the CCP’s hand was that many early Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) establishing CI partnerships between Chinese and U.S. universities were beholden to confidentiality clauses and not made public (GAO, 2019). This practice is uncommon for U.S. university MOUs with foreign partners. Such a lack of transparency increased the suspicions of Chinese language and Chinese studies faculty at many U.S. colleges and universities, who often opposed the creation of CIs as duplicative and as undermining their own work. In some examples, university presidents, and not faculty, led the charge to host a CI (GAO, 2019). Other concerns were that CIs would operate without faculty input and might saddle

campuses with compromises that would not hold up under scrutiny. Because CIs were answerable to the Chinese government, at least in part, faculty perceived them to be counter to the principle of academic self-governance (Sahlins, 2014).

The actions of Vice Minister Xu were also cause for concern. In 2014, the European Association for China Studies complained that Xu, while attending an association conference in Portugal, had decided that some presenters’ abstracts “were contrary to Chinese regulations” and had objected to the conference program’s characterization of Taiwan’s Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation which, like Hanban, sponsored the event. Without consultation, Xu instructed her staff to confiscate the materials and later returned them with the offending pages removed.³

Other incidents also raised concerns in the academic community. When the Chinese government offered to fund a new professorship at Stanford University, whose CI had opened in 2013, a Hanban official “expressed concern that (an) endowed professor might discuss ‘politically sensitive things, such as Tibet’” (Golden, 2015; Redden, 2012). Stanford refused to establish a CI under such terms, and Hanban agreed to move forward in funding the CI without this restriction in place. The university pushed back a second time when CI Chinese partner institution Peking University insisted that Stanford’s CI focus on social sciences (Knowles and Jin, 2019). Furthermore, North Carolina State University, whose CI opened in 2006 and closed in 2018, reportedly turned down a visit by the Dalai Lama at the suggestion of its Chinese CI partner institution (Golden, 2015).

Canada’s McMaster University closed its CI after a former instructor filed a discrimination complaint alleging that she was prohibited from participating in the spiritual practice Falun Gong by language in her contract with Hanban (Redden, 2017). McMaster University officials “sought to find a way to get around … discriminatory hiring practices but when they determined no solution was possible, they decided to close their institute.” This led at least one U.S. CI to add a nondiscrimination clause to its contract with Hanban, as the University of Iowa updated its contract language to state that its CI would “hire all employees internally” and not allow Hanban to “interfere with hiring practices” (Riley, 2013). Journalist Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian wrote about her experience of having Taiwan edited out of her biography by the co-director of Savannah State University’s CI when receiving an award from the institution’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communications (Allen-Ebrahimian, 2018). Such incidents sparked opposition to CIs from the National Association of Scholars, the American Association of University Professors, and the University of Chicago, among other groups (AAUP, 2014; Peterson, 2017; Schmidt, 2014).

The number of CIs continued to expand from 2004 to 2019 as universities sought to catalyze lucrative relationships and collaborations with Beijing and as CIs, and as Confucius Classrooms in particular, met a growing demand for Chinese language instruction. The expansion of CIs was not an isolated phenomenon

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³ See https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijings-propaganda-lessons-1407430440.

and occurred simultaneously with other changes, the combination of which raised alarms. The CI movement corresponded with

• ongoing increases in the costs of tuition, room, and board on U.S. campuses;
• ongoing decreases in the number of domestic students enrolling at U.S. campuses (NCES, 2022; NSCRC, 2022);
• an explosion in U.S. enrollments and tuition payments by Chinese undergraduates following the financial crisis of 2008 (Feldgoise and Zwetsloot, 2022; Ma, 2020; OpenDoors, 2021);
• a rapid expansion in Chinese research and development expenditures along with increasing rates of Chinese intellectual property theft (Financial Times, 2022; NSB, 2022);
• a growing interest in academic development offices to build relationships with and secure gifts from Chinese corporations, Chinese individuals, and Chinese philanthropic foundations; and
• strong interest by the U.S. scientific community to collaborate with Chinese researchers, many of whom are leaders in their disciplines and have access to generous Chinese government funding and research infrastructure.

CIs were partnerships; China did not impose them on institutions in the United States, and universities entered them voluntarily. While many higher education and research partnerships between the United States and China, including and beyond CIs, continue, such collaborations have become increasingly complex. These collaborations are emblematic of an era in which the United States and China became more deeply integrated with each other academically, commercially, and geostrategically. Distinctions between scholarly, economic, and national interests were blurred and easily confused. The committee firmly believes that this era has ended given the rise of a new geostrategic environment in the Indo-Pacific region.

GROWING CONCERNS

By 2017, deteriorating U.S.-China relations had begun to fuel broader suspicion by the U.S. government of close financial and research ties between U.S. universities and their Chinese counterparts. Furthermore, a misalignment in values between the United States and China became evident. Concerns that Chinese entities on U.S. campuses might attempt to stifle criticism of the Chinese government; augment China’s growing ability to translate its wealth into influence on U.S. administrations, curricula, and public programs; and introduce potential mechanisms for espionage and intellectual property theft posed by the openness of American universities caused U.S. policy makers to reevaluate academic ties

with China. Meanwhile, administrators at U.S. institutions of higher education were left to weigh the benefits of keeping their CIs open with the costs of increased congressional scrutiny.⁴

U.S. legislators’ sustained attention to CIs and China’s reach into the U.S. educational system proved more consequential than the earlier complaints of U.S. academic sinologists. Congressional alarm over the alleged influence of CIs coincided with, and was exacerbated by, lawmakers’ concerns over the strategic implications of a number of Chinese programs, policies, and activities that included the following:

• The Indigenous Innovation agenda, launched in 2006,⁵ that called on Chinese universities and scientific institutes to develop technology to build China’s wealth and power.
• Made in China 2025, a program announced in 2015 that listed specific industries and technologies that China intended to dominate and lead.
• Military-Civil Fusion policies, dating to the 1990s, that called on all Chinese institutions to share relevant technologies with the People’s Liberation Army.
• National Intelligence Laws⁶ requiring Chinese entities, including universities, to give the Chinese government any information or data it requested.
• The Thousand Talents program, along with other state-sponsored talent recruitment schemes, that sought to attract foreign science, technology, engineering, and mathematics experts, particularly those of Chinese origin, to China to contribute to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s national rejuvenation agenda (Weinstein, 2022). Scholars in the Thousand Talents program were a focus of the U.S. Department of Justice’s China Initiative, launched by the Trump administration, that targeted Chinese attempts to steal technology from U.S. universities and corporations (DOJ, 2021).
• The Huawei Corporation’s dominance of 5G technology and possible network security concerns, along with growing awareness of its funding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs on U.S. campuses (Flaherty, 2019; Friis and Lysne, 2021; Gibney, 2019).

In Washington, D.C., CIs—like the activities listed above—became another example of a Chinese activity of concern that either took place within U.S. borders or aimed to harm U.S. interests.

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⁴ See, for example, https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2018/2/rubio-warns-of-beijings-growing-influence-urges-florida-schools-to-terminate-confucius-institute-agreements.

⁵ See https://www.Chinalawinsight.com/2010/09/articles/intellectual-property/Chinas-indigenous-innovation-policy-and-its-effect-on-foreign-intellectual-property-rights-holders/.

⁶ See https://www.lawfareblog.com/beijings-new-national-intelligence-law-defense-offense.

CLOSURES

Between 2016 and 2020, several laws, U.S. Department of Education investigations, and other federal actions whittled away at the standing and viability of CIs and targeted their operations. The August 2018 signing into law of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2019 created new requirements for institutions of higher education to host CIs and led to numerous U.S.-based CIs closing. The NDAA prevented the Department of Defense (DOD), which funds key critical language programs at universities across the country, from supporting Chinese language study at any school that housed a CI unless DOD issued a waiver.⁷ To date, DOD has not issued a single waiver. In addition, the U.S. Department of State designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center, the headquarters of the American CI network, as a foreign mission of the People’s Republic of China on August 13, 2020.⁸

Although a bipartisan committee had found no evidence of espionage, intellectual property theft, or any other illegal activity being conducted by CIs,⁹ U.S. campuses faced a Hobson’s choice.¹⁰ U.S. universities that took Chinese language instruction seriously had to decide whether to take money from the U.S. government or the Chinese government. Other institutions without federally supported language programs also received significant pressure to close their CIs. The 2021 NDAA increased the penalty for universities that hosted CIs, as it prohibited them from receiving DOD funding for any purpose if their CIs remained open, unless DOD issued a waiver.

As of December 2022, the number of CIs operating at U.S. institutions of higher education has dropped from 121 to 7, one of which will close in 2023.¹¹ While the 2019 NDAA created difficult choices for the affected institutions, anecdotal evidence indicates that some used the new requirements to shut down programs that had become a financial drain or had otherwise underperformed (Zialcita, 2021). Worsening U.S.-China relations, the reduction in the number of Chinese students studying in the United States,¹² and the drop in U.S. interest in Chinese language study¹³ may have undermined the original justification for CIs. However, the declining number of CIs does not necessarily indicate a declining

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⁷ John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, Public Law 232, 115th Congress 2nd Session (August 13, 2018).

⁸ See https://2017-2021.state.gov/confucius-institute-u-s-center-designation-as-a-foreign-mission/index.html.

⁹ See https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/media/senators-portman-and-carper-unveil-bipartisan-report-on-confucius-institutes-at-us-universities_k-12-classrooms.

¹⁰ Merriam-Webster defines “Hobson’s choice” as “an apparently free choice when there is no real alternative.”

¹¹ See Appendix B, “Listing of Open, Closing, and Paused U.S. Confucius Institutes.”

¹² See https://www.wsj.com/articles/Chinese-student-visas-to-u-s-tumble-from-prepandemic-levels-11660210202?page=1.

¹³ See https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/09/colleges-move-close-chinese-government-funded-confucius-institutes-amid-increasing.

interest in academic partnerships for language studies. A recent study by the National Association of Scholars indicates that some U.S. colleges and universities, including institutions that formerly hosted CIs, may be conducting similar activities under different auspices, with direct or indirect financing from China.¹⁴

REPORT PURPOSE, CHARGE, AND APPROACH

The criteria DOD uses to determine whether the arrangements between U.S. institutions of higher education and their CIs warrant granting waivers is a pressing matter for institutions of higher education; the U.S. government; and if the most dire warnings of CI critics have merit, the American people. This committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) was asked by DOD, in response to Congress, to recommend criteria that colleges and universities should meet if the agency is to consider granting a waiver to the prohibition of DOD research support to an academic institution hosting a CI in a first report and to address additional issues concerning foreign-funded institutes on U.S. campuses and international partnerships in a second report (see Statement of Task in Box 1-1).

To carry out this charge, the National Academies formed a committee of leaders and scholars that included higher education administrators and researchers, science and technology policy experts, foreign language and China experts, international programs experts, and national security experts. Members of the committee unanimously support international partnerships, the core values of academic freedom and academic self-governance, and the openness and global character of the scientific and research enterprise. The committee also believes strongly that the study of critical languages is essential to national security.

Given its interpretation of the Statement of Task writ large, the committee addressed the following elements in this first report in service of providing a set of findings and recommendations, including waiver criteria to DOD:

• Identifying existing CIs and conducting case studies of existing and recently closed or soon-to-be-closed CIs to understand attributes of the relationship between CIs and their respective U.S. host institutions of higher education.
• Exploring why and how closure or renewal decisions were made.
• Examining policies and processes that open CIs have in place to protect against undue foreign influence that could adversely impact the academic education and research environment.

The committee will address the remaining components of the Statement of Task in a second report, to be released no later than June 30, 2023:

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¹⁴ See https://www.nas.org/reports/after-confucius-institutes/full-report.

• Gathering information on other foreign-funded institutes at U.S. institutions of higher education and describing characteristics and features of such institutes.
• Determining characteristics and features of foreign-funded institutes at U.S. institutions of higher education that could be flags for institutions to engage in further deliberation and vetting prior to entering into a partnership.
• Identifying implementable practices for U.S. institutions of higher education to ensure appropriate operations.
• Continuing exploration of what role the sensitivity of the research conducted on campus should play in determining which foreign-funded partnerships are appropriate.

An extensive literature review and study of relevant legislation, think tank reports, and recommendations issued by higher education associations, including

the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and the Council on Governmental Relations and by other organizations, including the Hoover Institution and the JASON independent science advisory group, have informed this study. In addition to considering reports and recommendations from a range of issue experts, the committee commissioned the American Institutes for Research to interview U.S. personnel from institutions currently and formerly hosting CIs to obtain deeper insights into their operations, viewpoints, and concerns.

The National Academies and DOD agreed to conduct this study at the unclassified level to ensure maximum transparency and accessibility and to engender trust between institutions of higher education and the agency. Both parties felt that this was necessary for communicating the justification for best practices and protections and for the development and implementation of a fair and effective waiver process—a waiver process that would enable institutions of higher education to understand what is being asked of them about academic freedom and

national security risks and threats and to take appropriate mitigating actions in service of being considered for a waiver.

However, this decision led to the committee working with a deficit of information throughout the information-gathering phase of the study, as it was unable to consider classified data, evidence, and threats. Multiple speakers from federal government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were invited but declined to speak with the committee in support of the study. While the Department of State declined to speak with the committee, the agency did furnish written answers to a set of questions developed by the committee. The lack of engagement with the law enforcement and intelligence communities hindered the committee’s exploration and understanding of security issues presented by CIs to U.S. institutions of higher education. The committee notes that this does not mean that adverse information or legitimate concerns regarding the presence of CIs and other foreign-funded entities on U.S. campuses does not exist. Indeed, the committee sought to conduct a rigorous exploration to the extent possible while working and developing findings, recommendations, and waiver criteria with available unclassified information.

REPORT STRUCTURE

The remainder of this report addresses the committee’s activities, findings, and recommendations. Chapter 2 describes the current landscape, characteristics, and features of CIs. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the benefits and risks posed by CIs to academic institutions and DOD-funded research, respectively. Chapter 5 presents the committee’s findings, and Chapter 6 provides the committee’s recommended conditions for granting a waiver.

The committee, through the information gathering conducted in support of this report, finds it is possible to implement measures on campus to mitigate—but not to fully eliminate—the risks associated with the presence of a CI and protect academic freedom, freedom of expression and dissent, and national security. Therefore, the committee developed waiver criteria it believes will protect U.S. academic values, research integrity, and security while allowing for expanded Chinese language study, which it believes is in the national interest. DOD can draw upon the recommended waiver criteria to create a process that will enable it to discern whether an institution of higher education has taken appropriate precautionary measures to receive a waiver.

It is the committee’s hope that this study will contribute to safeguarding U.S. higher education and the U.S. innovation system while promoting the vigilant openness that has made U.S. colleges and universities among the finest in the world.