US government orders Confucius Institutes to register as foreign mission
- China’s government-funded Mandarin language and culture programme in the US must register staff rosters and property holdings
- The move follows similar orders for Chinese state-run media outlets operating in America
The US State Department has designated a Chinese government-funded Mandarin-language programme as a foreign mission, expanding the scope of Chinese organisations operating in America that Washington regards as propaganda arms of Beijing.
Confucius Institutes in the US (CIUS) – an organisation managed by China’s Ministry of Education, and which finances its programmes on American campuses – will need to register its personnel roster and property holdings with the State Department, a move authorised by the Foreign Missions Act of 1982 (FMA), David Stilwell, the assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said on Thursday.
“We asked them to tell us what they're doing here in the US, we're not closing it. We’re simply designating them as what they are, as foreign missions,” Stilwell said.
Stilwell likened the move to the department’s new restrictions on journalists working at US bureaus for Chinese state media outlets. “This process that we've done so far with media and others has significantly improved visibility into what the [People’s Republic of China’s] state media is doing,” he said.
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He added that “these so-called journalists do in fact work for the Beijing ministry of propaganda”, and that “In the same way, these activities of Confucius Institutes … who work for the Communist Party cannot masquerade as benign academic institutions.”