China-US relations: White House denies backtracking on Confucius Institutes
- A Trump-era rule would have required many K-12 schools and colleges in the US to disclose their financial ties to the Chinese cultural organisation
- China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi listed shutting Confucius Institutes as among the stumbling blocks to people-to-people exchanges between the countries
The United States has denied withdrawing a Trump administration proposal that would have required American schools and universities to disclose their partnerships with China’s Confucius Institutes.
But it said it was still looking at the best way to counter China’s efforts to “undermine and interfere in democracies.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Thursday the draft rule had not been withdrawn from the Federal Register but from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) process, denying media reports that the Biden team “quietly” dropped the proposal.
“The Trump administration never submitted the draft rule to the Federal Register in the first place because OMB never completed its review of the draft rule during the Trump administration,” Price said.
“When it comes to the Confucius Institutes, we have ongoing concerns about activities of the CCP [China’s Communist Party], including through these institutes, given that they might affect academic freedom in the United States,” he said.