OPINION:
On Oct. 23, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the formal Pentagon designation of Confucius Institutes as a threat to U.S. national security. He warned that Chinese Communist Party-linked programs had never disappeared but had simply rebranded under different names.
The announcement followed Pentagon-mandated security reviews at 30 universities that examined relationships with foreign institutions posing security risks, including organizations associated with rebranded Confucius Institutes.
Yet these measures address only part of a much broader problem: The CCP has also cultivated a long-standing, decentralized and far less visible network of ties to community-based, Chinese-language schools across the United States. At those, its political influence can be harder to detect.
People were interested in these podcasts
Unlike Confucius Institutes, which operated through formal university partnerships, many community-based, Chinese-language schools were founded independently by immigrant parents seeking to preserve their language and cultural heritage and meet legitimate needs. Some have served local communities for generations, making important contributions to American society.
Beijing, however, has long recognized their strategic value. For more than three decades, the CCP has actively cultivated relationships with these schools and educational associations through the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, which was absorbed into the CCP’s United Front Work Department in 2018.
Our ongoing research examines how Beijing uses these relationships to project soft power, shape narratives in community-based primary and secondary Chinese-language education, advance its political interests and expand its influence beyond universities.
One channel is subsidized educational content. Through textbooks and teaching materials, Beijing has long promoted state-approved interpretations of Chinese history, political identity and territorial claims. A child attending weekend Chinese classes may come away having learned not only characters and idioms but also the contentious — and inaccurate — claim that Taiwan has always been part of China.
Sponsored teacher training and cultural exchanges can reinforce such narratives. Because these narratives reach younger generations during their formative years, their influence can be subtle and can build over time. As a saying attributed variously to Vladimir Lenin and the Jesuits goes, “Give me the child until he is 7, and I will give you the man.”
A separate concern is political mobilization. Our research found evidence that community-based Chinese-language schools helped mobilize participants for events welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping during his September visit to the United States. Such participation alone does not establish CCP direction or wrongdoing, but it shows that these educational networks can be mobilized for political activities.
Our research also points to a broader global pattern of Beijing cultivating influence through grassroots Chinese-language education networks in diaspora communities. Recent findings in the Philippines, a key U.S. treaty ally along the strategically vital First Island Chain, raise similar concerns.
A SeaLight investigation in July found that a Philippine Chinese education organization facilitated teacher training in China, with 43 of 56 participants in a 2024 program attending Jinan University. This is an institution under the CCP’s United Front Work Department, whose scholars had advanced Chinese ahistorical, extralegal territorial claims over the Philippines’ Batanes Islands.
These findings prompted Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro to call for greater scrutiny of Chinese state-linked educational exchanges, citing national security and foreign influence concerns while emphasizing that the inquiry was not directed at the Chinese-Filipino community.
More than 100 teachers from China subsequently left the Philippines — whether on their own or recalled by the Chinese government is a matter of debate — and social media influencers sought to reframe the controversy as anti-Chinese racism.
None of this means that Chinese American communities or Chinese-language schools should be viewed with suspicion. Preserving cultural heritage, teaching Mandarin or maintaining connections with China is not evidence of allegiance to Beijing. The distinction must remain between legitimate educational activities and documented efforts by CCP-linked institutions to advance political objectives.
Congress has already called for greater scrutiny. Rep. John Moolenaar, Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, sought to restrict CCP-linked funding in K–12 education and require foreign funding disclosures. Yet grassroots Chinese-language schools remain largely overlooked in these efforts.
Washington should extend transparency and due diligence to China-linked textbooks, teacher training and institutional partnerships. Schools and associations receiving such support should disclose the sources and conditions so parents and educators can understand who is behind the materials reaching children. Oversight must focus on documented institutional ties and conduct, not ethnicity or cultural identity.
Equally important, the U.S. should expand credible alternatives through cooperation with democratic Taiwan and its Taiwan Centers for Mandarin Learning. Supporting Taiwanese teacher exchanges and building partnerships with American schools can provide high-quality Mandarin education grounded in academic freedom and transparency.
The Pentagon’s latest action addresses a highly visible dimension of Beijing’s malign influence, but universities are only part of the picture. Protecting American communities requires looking beyond higher education and affiliations that carry Beijing’s name — and understanding the grassroots networks that do not.
• Piero A. Tozzi is senior director of China policy at the America First Policy Institute. Lucien L. Simon is an independent researcher.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.