The Pentagon is designating China’s Confucius Institutes as threats to U.S. national security for their role in malign activities at American universities, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Mr. Hegseth said Confucius Institutes are “Chinese government-backed propaganda cultural programs” operating as “sleeper” cells that infiltrated U.S. universities in nearly every state.
After Congress banned the institutes, which provided lucrative funding to many universities, the institutes that Beijing claims are harmless cultural and language promotion centers, continued to operate, the secretary said in a video posted online Friday.
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“They came back disguised in new forms, just like DEI does. Just call it a different name,” Mr. Hegseth said, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion programs he has aggressively purged from the Pentagon.
More than 100 Confucius Institutes had been identified at U.S. universities a decade ago and most were closed under pressure over concerns the schools that hosted them risked losing access to federal funds.
“It turns out that 80 new propaganda cells across 30 universities had popped up using different names and different charters, but with the same mission to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students,” Mr. Hegseth said.
To halt the activities, the Defense Department, renamed the War Department by the Trump administration but not yet formalized by Congress, added the disguised institutes to the Pentagon’s blacklist of Chinese, Russian and Iranian entities engaged in threatening activities.
U.S. universities and research institutes that engage in any collaboration with the listed entities will lose all defense funding. The list is called the 1286 list after the section of the 2019 law requiring the restrictions.
Mr. Hegseth said the Pentagon over the past two months “systematically dismantled” all the new Chinese centers using its leverage over funding.
“Let this be a lesson to any country trying to steal our hard-earned inventions or turn our young people against their own country. We’re done with that. No more and never again,” he said.
To the universities involved with the banned Chinese institutes, Mr. Hegseth told them to “stay vigilant” and to prevent any Chinese influence from returning in a different form.
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy had no immediate response to the Pentagon action.
However, China’s military criticized the new restrictions in a social media post.
“If learning Mandarin, KungFu, Chinese calligraphy and dance at Confucius Institutes poses threats to the US, then how many years and how seriously has China been threatened by the US? As so many Chinese learn and speak English, watch Hollywood and Disney movies, and drink Starbucks??” stated a post by the China Military Bugle, the official X account of the People’s Liberation Army.
Mr. Hegseth said China’s disguising of Confucius Institutes was similar to what he called the “cancer of DEI.”
Instead of complying with Pentagon policies aimed at killing all DEI programs and policies, “promoters of this ideology just tried to rebrand it and thought they would be safe,” he said.
“Now we were onto it and not going to let that happen on our watch. We ripped it out of the Department of War root and branch. We are gender neutral, colorblind and merit based,” Mr. Hegseth said.
The targeting of Confucius Institutes was part of a Pentagon audit of 30 universities announced last week, according to a Pentagon official.
The audit led to 30 U.S. universities successfully ending all collaboration with Chinese entities on the 1286 list that was most recently published in July.
Additionally, “precautionary terminations” were carried out by the 30 universities with entities not on the list, the Pentagon said in a statement Oct. 19.
Among the 30 schools involved were Oklahoma State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of South Carolina, University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin, and Virginia Tech.
“Rather than settling for minimum compliance, these institutions took bold, self-initiated steps to protect their labs, faculty, and intellectual property from foreign exploitation,” said Assistant Defense Secretary for Science and Technology Joseph Jewell.
The Washington Times first reported in 2022 that Confucius Institutes were not closed and instead rebranded in a bid to sustain their presence on university campuses.
A report by the National Association of Scholars revealed that 28 U.S. institutions had replaced closed Confucius Institutes with similar programs, and 58 maintained close ties to a former Confucius Institute partner. Five institutes transferred their operations to new hosting organizations, the report said.
“The demise of Confucius Institutes, one of China’s most strategic beachheads in American higher education, has not deterred the Chinese government from seeking alternative means of influencing American colleges and universities,” the independent conservative advocacy group’s report stated.
Rep. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, in December praised new legislation that would ban federal funding of any schools that accept Confucius Institute funds.
“China wants to influence what American students learn in classrooms from kindergarten through college,” the Michigan Republican said.
“The CCP would love to stop Americans from learning about its horrific Cultural Revolution, its slaughter of innocent students at Tiananmen Square, its genocide of Uyghurs, and its authoritarian plans for the future,” he said, noting the three new bills will block China’s influence.
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