Confucius Institutes

Harvard Arrest Puts Focus on Chinese Espionage and Propaganda Centers in U.S.

By Janet Lorin

They’re called Confucius Institutes, and for about 15 years these centers for Chinese language and cultural education have proliferated at U.S. universities, drawing students eager to learn about the country.
Now, the Chinese government-funded organizations face more scrutiny as U.S.-China tensions over intellectual property and espionage intensify.
The arrest this week of a Harvard University chemistry professor for lying about his ties to China is shedding renewed light on the institutes and ratcheting up pressure for colleges to close them.
“This is a blatant attempt by the Chinese to infiltrate and both steal American ideas and co-opt students, but also to monitor and influence the behavior of Chinese students who are studying here in America,” Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton said in an interview Wednesday.

Confucius Closings

University of Missouri closed its center in January 2020

University of Massachusetts/Boston closed its center in January 2019.

University of Michigan closed its center in 2018

Texas A&M closed its center in 2018

Penn State closed its center in 2014

University of Chicago closed its center in 2014

Source: National Assn of Scholars, Bloomberg 

Moulton, a Democrat, plans to introduce legislation that he said would better protect U.S. technology from being stolen by researchers including academics who are being paid by China or other adversaries.
There are about 80 Confucius Institutes at U.S. colleges, including Stanford University and Savannah State University in Georgia, according to the National Association of Scholars, a non-partisan research group that has studied the centers and opposes them.
The institutes teach humanities classes in Chinese culture and language and steer clear of history, politics and current affairs, according to the Confucius Institute U.S. Center website. 

They are run by their host university faculty and administrators with assistance from faculty at their Chinese partner universities.

Chinese peril
Of the 550 Confucius Institutes around the world, the largest concentration is in the U.S., according to the Washington-based non-profit.
The Scholars association opposes them because their funding lacks transparency and topics sensitive to China are off limits.
“As it stands now, they’re more of a threat than they are a friend,” said Chance Layton, a spokesman for the group.
Some schools shut the institutes after passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, legislation that partly seeks to police China on a range of matters. 

One provision prohibits the U.S. Defense Department from funding Chinese language programs at colleges with the institutes unless schools obtain a waiver.
More recently, universities have come under pressure from U.S. lawmakers. 

Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, has urged schools in his state to terminate their agreements with Confucius Institutes.
Moulton sent letters in 2018 to several schools demanding that they close their institutes or not allow them on campus. 

In his state, the University of Massachusetts/Boston closed its center in January 2019.

Confucius Institutes: Alarming Chinese meddling at UK universities exposed in report

Chinese embassy is coordinating efforts to curb academic freedom
By Patrick Wintour 

‘China is seeking to shape the research agenda or curricula of UK universities,’ says parliamentary report. 

Universities are not adequately responding to the growing risk of China influencing academic freedom in the UK, the foreign affairs select committee has said.
The report, rushed out before parliament is suspended pending the election, finds “alarming evidence” of Chinese interference on UK campuses, adding the activity seeking to restrict academic freedom is coordinated by the Chinese embassy in London.

The report says: “There is clear evidence that autocracies are seeking to shape the research agenda or curricula of UK universities, as well as limit the activities of researchers on university campuses. Not enough is being done to protect academic freedom from financial, political and diplomatic pressure.”
The committee highlighted the role of China-funded Confucius Institutes officials in confiscating papers that mentioned Taiwan at an academic conference, the use of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association as an instrument of political interference and evidence that dissidents active while studying in the UK, such as Ayeshagul Nur Ibrahim, an Uighur Muslim, were being monitoring and her family in China being harassed.
The committee accuses some academic organisations, such as Million Plus, which represents 20 modern universities, of complacency.

Pro-Beijing Bill Rammell, the chair of Million Plus, told the committee he had “not heard one piece of evidence” that substantiated claims of foreign influence in universities.
The committee said the government’s focus was on protecting universities from intellectual property theft and risks arising from joint research projects. 

“This is not enough to protect academic freedom from other types of interference such as financial, political or diplomatic pressure,” the MPs said.
The Foreign Office’s evidence to the committee highlighted the lack of government advice to universities, the report says, adding ministers have not coordinated approaches to the issue, either within Whitehall or with foreign governments such as Australia and the US.
The report points out that a 2019 international education strategy white paper mentions China more than 20 times in the context of boosting education expertise to the Chinese market, but with no mention of security or interference.

The committee concluded: “The battle for university students or trade deals should not outweigh the international standards which have brought freedom and prosperity to the UK and the wider world. The government should provide any strategic advice to universities and not used its key sanction tools such as ‘Magnitsky powers’ to curb interference on human rights grounds.”
Ministers can curb interference through the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act passed 17 months ago, the report said.
However, ministers previously told the committee they could not use the so-called Magnitsky amendment, contained in the act, until the UK had left the EU. 

In June the FCO finally admitted this interpretation was legally incorrect, and the powers could be used independently of the EU while still an EU member.

Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the foreign affairs select committee, says academic freedoms are under threat in the UK. 

The FCO has still to lay the necessary statutory instrument to introduce the power, 17 months after the act became law. 

The foreign affairs select committee pointed out that the power, touted by the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, in pre-Conservative party conference interviews, will be delayed still further by the general election.
The committee, chaired by the Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, also asked the FCO to explain its failure to use sanctions in response to Chinese repression in Hong Kong and East Turkestan.
On the question of Hong Kong, where violent protests continue and local elections are due to be held later this month, the committee has urged the government to assess the reputational damage to the UK of British judges continuing to sit on the Hong Kong court of final appeal. 

The committee warns there is a danger of the UK appearing to be complicit in supporting and participating in a system that is undermining the rule of law.
In a bid to support the protesters, the UK should grant residency to Hong Kong citizens who are British national (overseas) passport holders, the report said.

Tugendhat said hard-won freedoms were under threat in the UK. 

The FCO had been “found wanting in three policy areas: autocracies’ influence on academic freedom; the use of sanctions against autocratic states and their supporters, and the UK’s cooperation with other democracies in responding to autocracies”.

Kick Confucius Institutes Off Campus

Chinese Propaganda Has No Place on Campus
Universities can’t handle Confucius Institutes responsibly. The state should step in.
BY ANDREAS FULDA

The exasperated expression on the face of Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, at a public hearing on the influence of autocracies on U.K. universities gave it away. 

Tugendhat had just asked what could be done to address self-censorship among Chinese students in the United Kingdom or the United States. 

The evasive answers by Alexander Bustamante, the senior vice president and chief compliance and audit officer at the University of California, and Bill Rammell, the vice chancellor at the University of Bedfordshire and chair of MillionPlus, the Association for Modern Universities, were met with a frown and the occasional glance at the chairman’s mobile phone. 

Tugendhat, a former British Army officer and counterintelligence expert, was not having it.
Tugendhat is not the only exasperated one in this discussion. 

Over the last 15 years, one question has come up again and again: the role of Confucius Institutes, funded and run by the Chinese party-state, in extending Chinese censorship to Western universities.
Since 2004, around 550 Confucius Institutes have opened worldwide, with close to 100 in the United States and 29 in the United Kingdom. 

In recent years, however, the enthusiasm with which university leaders around the world have embraced the institutes has soured. 

Increasing numbers of them have been shut. 

That’s partially thanks to the geopolitical shift against an increasingly autocratic Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Xi Jinping’s leadership and partially due to the institutes themselves being no more immune to the CCP’s waves of political repression than any other Chinese state institute—even abroad.
Confucius Institutes repeatedly stray from their publicly declared key task of providing Mandarin Chinese language training and venture into deep ideological territory. 

The institutes’ learning materials distort contemporary Chinese history and omit party-induced humanitarian catastrophes such as the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) entirely. 

At Confucius Institute events, politically sensitive issues like Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen cannot be publicly discussed either. 

In 2014, a conference in Braga, Portugal, that involved both the Confucius Institute headquarters and the Taiwan-based Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange as co-sponsors was unceremoniously interrupted by Confucius Institute headquarters chief Xu Lin. 

And under the conditions of the Seven Don’t Speak directive, mainland Chinese education workers are barred from talking about universal values, freedom of speech, civil society, civil rights, the historical errors of the CCP, official bourgeoisie, and judicial independence—even when overseas.
There is an existing problem of self-censorship among China scholars. 

A recent survey revealed that in the face of increasing CCP censorship, “researchers employ several tactics in the face of such pressures. Almost half — some 48% — of respondents adapted how they describe their project in order to continue doing it, 25% changed the project’s focus, and 15% discontinued a project because of concern for sensitivity — or feasibility as the likelihood of being denied archive access in China made many projects unfeasible.”

Confucius Institutes bring another factor in: the hope of money and the fear of losing it. 

In a report by the Royal United Services Institute on China-U.K. relations, Charles Parton, a former British diplomat and security expert, pointed out that the “problem does not lie primarily with teaching staff. Often, when they meet pressure, they are not backed up by university administrators. 

A number of professors have told the author that vice-chancellors and other administrators have not supported them when they have been subject to pressures which impinge on academic freedom.”
Confucius Institutes at universities can be likened to Perry Link’s “anaconda in the chandelier”—his metaphor for the power of censorship in China. 

While the anaconda may not move, its shadow nevertheless induces fear among staff, students, and university managers alike, and they react accordingly. 

Mindful of the importance of international student recruitment, there is little appetite among university administrators to jeopardize the steady stream of fee-paying international students from mainland China.
Confucius Institutes play a double role: They are both cultural and political organizations. 

When discussing the equally controversial role of Chinese Students and Scholars Associations, student groups with strong ties to the Chinese embassies, the British academic Martin Thorley recently coined the term “latent network.” 

In Thorley’s words, the “latent network is one of multiple forms of power transmission by the Party-state over the periphery. The firewall between the public and the private, typically a far more robust fixture in liberal democracies, must be more permeable in a system where a single institution rules without effective legal oversight.” 

Thorley goes on to explain that “institutions within this network, though not necessarily controlled by the CCP directly in their day-to-day affairs, are dependent on CCP patronage and thus, subject to CCP direction.”
The fate of the Lyon Confucius Institute (LCI) underscores the danger that Confucius Institutes as latent networks pose. 

Following the arrival of an activist director from mainland China in the fall of 2012, an increasingly bitter conflict ensued over curriculum development. 

When LCI Chair of the Board Gregory Lee successfully resisted such attempts to introduce a CCP-style curriculum, the university’s relationship with Hanban, the Confucius Institute headquarters in Beijing, ended acrimoniously, and the LCI was closed. 

Any other global university currently partnering with Confucius Institutes may in the future share Lyon’s fate.
All this points to a critical truth: The decision to host Confucius Institutes on campuses should not be devolved to universities but made by the state.
Unless they’re willing to see the CCP’s grip tighten on their own institutions, governments worldwide should move to ban Confucius Institutes from operating on university campuses. 

Critics call this McCarthyism. 

But such a state intervention would not be undermining but in fact restoring academic autonomy and freedom of speech. 

Nobody is calling for intellectual restrictions or ideological tests for staff — merely for a recognition that money is power and that the CCP is ready to use it. 

Such state intervention would also provide the necessary cover for universities to terminate their existing cooperation agreements with Confucius Institutes without being accused of picking a fight with the CCP.
Opponents of such a state intervention should bear in mind that Confucius Institutes—just like any other cultural organization operating overseas—could still register as civic groups and rent out office space off campus and continue their public relations work. 

This is how Western cultural organizations like the Goethe-Institut, British Council, and Institut Français operate globally. 

Removing Confucius Institutes from universities could be considered an overdue standardization that brings them in line with common global practice.
Following such a ban, Confucius Institutes could also merge with China Cultural Centers, another Chinese cultural organization that operates with more than 30 branches worldwide.
But governments and universities alike should make up for the limited loss of revenue by fully funding Chinese language and contemporary Chinese studies provision. 

If China matters, they should put their money where their mouth is. 

It remains the responsibility of Western educators to proactively engage Chinese students and scholars as individuals and take the lead in introducing domestic students to mainland China, rather than letting the CCP and its outlets own the China story.

Chinese Fifth Column

FARA should apply to Confucius Institutes

BY ANDY KEISER

Under Xi Jinping's consolidated power, China is working diligently to supplant the United States as the world's top economic and military power. 

That includes a comprehensive effort to influence American K-12 and higher educational students with a favorable view of the Communist Chinese government to shape U.S. policy over the long-term.

This influence operation by a hostile foreign power, led by China's state-controlled Confucius Institutes, should trigger the Justice Department to require a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filing by the institutes and its employees.
FARA requires anyone working at the behest of a foreign government to register with the Department of Justice. 

Originally written to combat propaganda, FARA also covers lobbying and public relations. 

FARA is a content-neutral disclosure statute that is designed to expose foreign associations to help ensure transparency and accountability in public policy.
Confucius Institutes are extensions of the Chinese government, plain and simple. 

They are owned and controlled by the government in Beijing and are overseen by the Office of Chinese Language International, commonly known as Hanban, a division of the Chinese Ministry of Education.
The Chinese government spends billions of dollars annually on propaganda activities promoted through Confucius Institutes. 

Primarily targeted to the U.S., there are more than 100 Confucius Institutes in the American universities and colleges that have opted into the programing. 

Confucius Institutes have expanded their reach to include K-12 education through an effort called "Confucius Classrooms."
The underhanded genius behind Confucius Institutes is that they operate under the benign guise of teaching Chinese language, culture and history while simultaneously ensuring that they can restrict speech, control curriculum and force educational institutions to choose Confucius Institute faculty from a pre-approved list of teachers provided by the Hanban.

According to a letter Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent last year to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Confucius Institutes "require the teaching to ignore human rights abuses, and stress that Taiwan and Tibet are part of China, among other restrictions."
Institute presence, particularly on U.S. college campuses, can also be a threat to economic and national security. 

The Chinese government can hand-pick employees at Confucius Institutes and use them as its eyes and ears or task them to steal sensitive, valuable university research. 

The transparency of a FARA filing would at least give more insight to U.S. counterintelligence professionals and to the public about the scope and scale of Confucius Institute activities.

According to Grassley's letter, a Chinese government official stated that the "Confucius Institute is an appealing brand for expanding our culture abroad. It has made an important contribution toward improving our soft power... using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical."
Others have taken note. 

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Tom Carper (D-Del.), released a bipartisan report in 2015 that detailed the activities of Confucius Institutes. 

Among several alarming findings, it details that since 2006 the Chinese government has given more than $158 million to fund Confucius Institutes in the U.S. 

It has veto authority over events and speakers at the institutes, and controls every aspect of their operations in the United States, including staff members pledging to protect Chinese national interests.
Grassley recently introduced the Foreign Agents Disclosure and Registration Enhancement Act of 2019 to beef up FARA enforcement and held a hearing on foreign threats to taxpayer funded research, which focused extensively on China's activities on university campuses. 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has led a series of efforts against Chinese influence and espionage operations targeting American higher education, having secured a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 prohibiting the Department of Defense from funding Confucius Institutes.
Sen. Cruz has also introduced legislation called the Stop Higher Education Espionage and Theft Act to further crack down on Confucius Institutes, which he called "the velvet glove around the iron fist of their campaigns on our campuses."
The Chinese government's desire to influence our public policy through propaganda, conduct aggressive espionage on our soil and steal our intellectual property is real and hard to overestimate. The activities occurring at Confucius Institutes to achieve China's goals undoubtedly trigger the requirements of FARA. 

The Department of Justice should take immediate action to provide the type of transparency needed to help protect our nation.

The Nasty Truth Behind Confucius Institutes

They function as organs for dissemination of Chinese Communist propaganda.

By RACHELLE PETERSON
Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) 

Chinese-government-sponsored Confucius Institutes are “a tool for China to spread influence and exercise soft power,” “a known threat to academic freedom,” and “a danger to our national defense and security,” says Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) in a letter sent last week to the University of Missouri and Webster University.
Both institutions host Confucius Institutes, campus centers that teach Chinese language and culture and are funded and partly staffed and overseen by the Chinese government.
Hawley urges the universities to “reconsider” those relationships.
Hawley’s conclusions aren’t just his own personal notions.
He cites FBI director Christopher Wray, who for the last year and a half has publicly warned colleges about Confucius Institutes.
Just last week Wray testified, in response to questioning from Hawley, that Confucius Institutes are “part of China’s soft power strategy and influence” because they “offer a platform to disseminate Chinese government or Chinese Communist Party propaganda, to encourage censorship, to restrict academic freedom.”
Hawley cites Li Changchun, a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party, who famously declared Confucius Institutes “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.” 
He cites North Carolina State University, which canceled an event with the Dalai Lama under pressure from its Confucius Institute. 
And he cites the fact that ever-increasing numbers of American colleges and universities — now 24 of them — have cut ties with their Confucius Institutes. (Hawley also cites an article I wrote, based on my 2017 report Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education.)
Hawley’s concerns, well grounded and substantial, are nothing surprising.
What is surprising are the reactions of Mizzou and Webster. 
After several years of growing evidence that Confucius Institutes are all-round a bad deal for colleges, they are doubling down in defense of their Confucius Institutes.
University of Missouri spokesman Christian Basi assured the public that all Chinese-government-sponsored teachers on its campus are mere “interns” and that Mizzou, having previously been in touch with the FBI, is “doing the proper things to monitor” possible academic espionage.
Basi also says that Mizzou will review its contract for the Confucius Institute before it expires in 2021 but that the university has already “made some changes to policies and procedures.”
Webster University president Elizabeth Stroble went two leaps further.
One day after receiving Hawley’s letter, she dashed off a response, declaring, “We have no reason to believe that the Confucius Institute at Webster University creates the risks described in your letter.” Stroble demanded of Hawley, “If you are aware of evidence that anyone is using the Confucius Institute at Webster University for a nefarious purpose, please share such evidence with us without delay.”
Mizzou and Webster should take Hawley’s concerns more seriously.
Reflexively declaring that all the FBI’s warnings involve some other university somewhere else reflects poorly on Mizzou and Webster’s commitment to safeguard academic freedom and protect their students from propaganda — let alone from espionage.
Mizzou, where professor Melissa Click called for “some muscle over here” to oust a student journalist from a 2015 protest, and whose system president and campus chancellor resigned rather than face down activists’ demands, is probably outstanding example No. 1 of a poorly run public university. 
In the two years following those events, enrollment dropped 35 percent and Mizzou eliminated 400 positions.
That track record doesn’t inspire confidence in Mizzou’s ability to manage the risks of a Confucius Institute.
Webster in particular has a poor track record of keeping tabs on its Confucius Institute.
One year ago the former director of its Confucius Institute was convicted in federal court of embezzling $375,000 from the university.
Deborah Pierce had directed funds to a separate bank account, from which the federal government recovered an additional $160,000.
That kind of outright illegal behavior is rare.
The greater danger is subtle.
Confucius Institutes teach the Chinese government’s preferred version of Chinese culture, a version whitewashed of Muslim Uighurs, 1 million of whom are currently held in concentration camps in East Turkestan.
Confucius Institute teachers, Chinese nationals hired and paid by the Chinese government, are coached to omit the Tiananmen Square massacre and to represent Taiwan as part of China. 
One Chinese staff member at a Confucius Institute told me that if she were asked about Tiananmen Square, she would “show a picture and point out the beautiful architecture.”
The Hanban, the Chinese government agency tasked with overseeing Confucius Institutes, instructs teachers to focus on lessons that result in “deepening friendly relationships with other nations.” That’s not necessarily harmful — but it leaves students with a remarkably one-sided education.
Confucius Institutes are central players in China’s long-term strategy to gain influence in American institutions.
Colleges and universities see them as financial goody bags: free teachers and textbooks plus ancillary funds to offer Chinese classes, study-abroad funding, sponsored trips to China for the university president and other administrators, access to full-tuition-paying Chinese students.
Webster University operates a campus in China. 
Half of all Mizzou’s foreign students come from China.
Any institute that spreads propaganda has no place on American college campuses.
Too many have eagerly accepted China’s funding without protecting academic integrity.
Senator Hawley deserves credit for calling the University of Missouri and Webster University to account.
It’s time for Confucius Institutes to go.

Born to Spy

Many Chinese students at US colleges are Chinese spies

By Newt Gingrich

The Heritage Foundation trade economist Tori Whiting says the Trump administration needs to focus on technology transfer, intellectual property protection and structural reforms in China.
When most Americans think of espionage, we think of debonair foreign spies sneaking around military compounds – or bespectacled hackers hammering away at keyboards to steal top-secret information from foreign adversaries.
But there is an entire world of espionage happening right under our noses – at American colleges and universities.
China's intelligence services routinely probe computer systems at higher education institutions in the United States – and they also enlist and implant students and professors as assets to pass important research and findings to their spy agencies.
The main goal isn’t typically to learn any classified state secrets (not in academic espionage anyway). China wants to steal the important technological advancements, research, and innovations created by our nation's best and brightest researchers and scientists.
In 2013, the Commission on the Theft of Intellectual Property said that this academic espionage made up a significant part of the estimated $300 billion of intellectual property theft America endured that year.
According to the commission, "American scientific innovations and new technologies are tracked and stolen from American universities, national laboratories, private think tanks, and start-up companies, as well as from the major R&D centers of multinational companies."
This is a serious problem for the United States. 

If this level of academic espionage continues, our ability to lead the world in innovation and new technology could be severely hampered – and the future could be defined by the countries who are stealing our ideas.
One of the biggest offenders is China. 

Former National Counterintelligence Executive Michelle Van Cleave told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on June 9, 2016 that "hundreds of thousands of students and academicians" aid China’s spy operations.
These students, professors, and researchers (either willingly or through intense pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party) help to "potentially extend the reach of Chinese intelligence into the core structures of our nation's security," Van Cleave told the commission.
Of particular concern are China’s Confucius Institutes that have been established on campuses in the U.S. and across the world. 

At first blush, these institutes appear to be legitimate academic foreign exchange programs promoting Chinese language and cultural studies. 

However, they are also used to spread Chinese Communist Party propaganda and soft power by promoting the party’s vision of China. 

Concerns have been raised that they could be used for espionage efforts.
On Feb. 13, 2018, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee that China is beginning to pull back on this effort, but the institutes are still "something that we're watching warily and in certain instances have developed ... appropriate investigative steps."
Luckily, there is an ongoing effort in Congress to curb this activity and protect American colleges and universities from being helpless targets of Chinese espionage. 

The "Stop Higher Education Espionage and Theft Act of 2019," or SHEET Act, was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. 

Rep. Francis Rooney, R-Fla., is carrying the proposal in the House.
This bill would create a new way for federal law enforcement to designate an entity suspected of spying in our colleges and universities as a "foreign intelligence threat to higher education." (The designation will be promptly appealable when warranted.)
Colleges and universities that accept gifts from or enter into contracts with designated threats will have more stringent reporting requirements under the Higher Education Act. 

If evidence of espionage is found, authorities will be able to quickly remove identified threats.
This is a critically important problem that we must solve. 

When foreign countries steal our research and ideas, American researchers, innovators, and thinkers lose the ability to lead our country into the future. 

Ultimately, this costs American jobs – and our security.
Congress should pass the SHEET Act as soon as possible.

Chinese Dissidents Feel Heat of Beijing’s Wrath. Even in Canada.

Sheng Xue thought she would be safe in Toronto. Then she began speaking out against the Chinese government and became the victim of a lurid smear campaign.
By Catherine Porter

Sheng Xue has been the victim of a relentless smear campaign that has all the markings of a coordinated attack by the Chinese Communist Party.

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario — Search for Sheng Xue on Google in English and you will find the story of an award-winning writer who left China for Canada after the Tiananmen Square uprising and became one of the world’s leading advocates for Chinese democracy.
But that same search in Chinese comes up with a very different portrait: Sheng Xue is a fraud, a thief, a traitor and a serial philanderer.
Want proof?
It offers up salacious photos, like one seeming to show her kissing a man who is not her husband.
As China extends its influence around the globe, it has mastered the art of soft power, establishing Confucius Institutes on Western college campuses and funding ports and power plants in developing countries.
But building up is only one prong of the Chinese strategy.
The other is knocking down.
And few know this better than Sheng Xue.
For more than six years, the Chinese-Canadian activist has been the victim of a relentless campaign to discredit her by blog, Listserv, e-book and social media, which bears the markings of a coordinated attack by the Chinese Communist Party.
“This is a textbook destabilization of the exile movement,” said Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s regional director for East Asia.
“Since the early 1990s,” Mr. Bequelin said, “China has understood the best way to neutralize this group and prevent them from essentially getting organized is to ensure they have no undisputed figurehead.”
Sheng Xue is the pen name for 57-year-old Zang Xihong.
The attacks have left her name — and health — in tatters.
“I escaped Tiananmen Square in China,” she said one winter day sitting in the living room of her suburban bungalow outside Toronto.
“I thought I’d have a safe, happy life in Canada.”
But the Communist Party, she said, “was already here.”
The smears cannot be definitively linked to the Chinese government, experts say.
However in Canada, security experts have warned for years about the growing influence of Beijing not only on Chinese expatriates but on the Canadian government itself. 
In 2010, the head of Canada’s intelligence service shocked the country by declaring that the Chinese Communist Party had agents of influence in local governments.
And in 2017, a confidential report prepared by the Canadian branch of Amnesty International alerted the authorities to the harassment of Chinese-Canadian activists, the scale of which appeared “consistent with a coordinated, Chinese state-sponsored campaign.”
The dissident who seemed to be getting the worst of it: Sheng Xue.
“I think she’s a victim,” said Andy Ellis, the former assistant director of operations for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
“I strongly do. The Chinese government is trying to sully her reputation to advance their own interests.”
The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa declined to comment.

Rise to prominence. Flood of hate.
Sheng Xue, whose pen name is Mandarin for “abundant snow,” arrived in Canada in August 1989 on a visa to study journalism.
But while she had left China, she could not leave China behind.
Haunted by the sight of soldiers shooting into a crowd close to her family’s apartment during the Tiananmen Square massacre in June of that year, Sheng Xue abandoned her study plans and threw herself into the burgeoning Chinese democracy movement in Toronto.
She helped form a local branch of the Federation for a Democratic China, which at its height had 3,000 members in 25 countries.
Despite having forgone a degree, Sheng Xue broke into journalism and fashioned a successful career as a writer.
But she was best known for her activism — leading protests, lobbying governments and helping fellow activists with their asylum cases.
In 2012, Canada’s immigration minister gave her a medal for “extraordinary contributions to the country.”
A month later, she was elected president of the federation.
The first conference she hosted as the group’s president should have been a moment of glory. Hundreds came from across the globe.

Sheng Xue at a rally last year for political prisoners in front of the Chinese Consulate in Toronto.

The Chinese Consulate in Toronto.

Sheng Xue and her husband, Xin Dong, visiting the graveyard where her parents are buried in Mississauga, Ontario.

The moment she remembers best, however, is stepping off the stage and finding herself surrounded by colleagues holding cellphones.
They were showing her emails they had just received, with various photos of her half-naked.
Except they were obvious fakes.
In one photo, Sheng Xue’s face was pasted onto another woman’s body.
Another email included a supposed love letter from her to an activist in Australia, so crass, it seemed a parody.
The sender appeared to be yet another activist, Chin Jin, but he said the email was a fake.
There were sex-wanted ads posted in Sheng Xue’s name.
Lurid stories about her sex life.
Nude photos were published on a new Twitter account, of higher quality than the first ones, and harder to dismiss out of hand.
Some seemed to capture her kissing the Australian activist, Xiaogang Zhang, although both say they are fakes.
The timing seemed beyond coincidence.
“There has been a pattern,” said Jie Chen, an associate professor of international relations at the University of Western Australia who studies the Chinese democracy movement.
Pointing a finger at the Chinese Communist Party, he said, “Whoever is doing well, whoever seems to be effective in damaging the reputation of the C.C.P., all of a sudden they will get attacked very systematically.”

‘I am the real Liu Shaofu’
The attacks appear to exploit tensions within the dissident movement, where Sheng Xue is a polarizing figure.
“People who love her, really love her,” said Michael Stainton, the retired president of the Taiwanese Human Rights Association of Canada.
“People who despise her, really despise her.”
Many of her attackers are former friends and colleagues. But they say their identities were stolen.
Zhu Rui, a Chinese-Canadian author, began questioning Sheng Xue back in 2010, after the two traveled together to Dharamsala, India.
Since then, Ms. Zhu has penned many critical blog posts and assembled two e-books about Sheng Xue, accusing her of lying, personally profiting off refugee applicants and events, and being a fake witness to the Tiananmen Square massacre, among other things.
But in 2011, Ms. Zhu said, someone hacked into her computer, stole an unpublished essay about Sheng Xue and sent it to a dissident group posing as her.
Similarly, Liu Shaofu, an elder of the democracy movement, said an impostor opened a Twitter account with his name and photo to post criticism of Sheng Xue, including one fake nude photo.
Mr. Liu had collaborated with Sheng Xue for years, even living in her basement, but they had a public falling out in 2013.
“I am the real Liu Shaofu,” he wrote in his first tweet after setting up a different account in June 2014.
“Don’t you feel ashamed you sent out so many tweets in my name?”

Sheng Xue at a hospital for a CT scan. She says that stress related to ongoing online attacks has compromised her health.

A portrait of Xi Jinping was defaced at a rally for political prisoners at the Chinese Consulate in Toronto.

Toronto’s Chinatown district.

Perhaps Sheng Xue’s most vocal critic is Fei Liangyong, a former federation president living in Germany who has accused her of a raft of moral failings, including “sexual impropriety and general wickedness.”
“To not criticize her would run counter to my democratic ideas and bring shame on my lifelong struggle for democracy and constitutional government in China,” he said in an email.
Mr. Fei’s essays have been widely republished on anonymous anti-Sheng Xue blogs.
But he said he did not know who was behind them.
A Twitter account with his name and photo, which Mr. Fei said he did not create, posted links to one of the blogs.
Many fellow activists, even those who have themselves been targeted by the Chinese government, believe some of the accusations against Sheng Xue.
“The Chinese government tries all means to marginalize, to silence and detain Chinese activists, in China and outside,” said Teng Biao, a civil rights lawyer who escaped China in 2012 and now lives in New Jersey.
But, he added, “what happened to Sheng Xue might be a little complicated, because as far as I know, some claims are true.”
Taken together, a pattern emerges: Doubt is turned into distrust, and dislike into loathing.
“It’s called blowing on the hot coals,” said Mr. Bequelin of Amnesty International.

A movement splintered
Sheng Xue learned the Chinese government had her on its black list in 1996, when she tried to return to Beijing.
She was stopped at the airport, interrogated and sent back to Canada the next day.
Since then, it has become clear she remains a target, and at least three comrades in Canada report pressure from Chinese security services over their ties to her.
One, Yi Jun, said every time he returned to China, he was taken to tea by members of the Communist security bureau.
“They say Sheng Xue is very counterrevolutionary and a very bad person,” said Mr. Yi, the president of the federation’s Toronto branch.
Another dissident, Leon Liang, said his wife back in Shenzhen was visited regularly by the authorities and given a warning: “If I didn’t inform on Sheng Xue, they would take her job.”
The attacks on Sheng Xue have taken a toll not just on her but on the dissident movement itself.
The federation, which had already dwindled to about 100 members, split in two in 2017, with Mr. Fei forming a second group.
Sheng Xue has stepped down as president.
The fight was so public and ugly, it tarnished everyone.
One member in Germany distributed an “investigation” a year after the death of Sheng Xue’s mother, claiming that she had pimped out her young daughters, and that it was the source of Sheng Xue’s moral bankruptcy.
“I really lament the fact the organization founded by Tiananmen Square leaders and intellectuals has degenerated to such a miserable state,” said Mr. Chen, the University of Western Australia professor.
Few dissidents will fail to get the message, said Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former Canadian intelligence officer specializing in China: “If you participate and support these people, look what I can do to you. Your local government won’t be able to protect you.”

Sheng Xue lives in a bungalow in a suburb of Toronto. Many fellow dissidents stay there, renting rooms in the basement.

The walls of Sheng Xue’s living room are decorated with photos of her with influential people, including the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere.

Sheng Xue with friends and supporters during her birthday party.

Sheng Xue continues her activism, but her health has been declining.
She has met with doctors about heart palpitations and headaches.
She never found an effective defense against the campaign, which she dismisses in totality as lies.
Some of her supporters formed a “Friends of Sheng Xue” organization, declaring the attacks a “threat to Canada’s sovereignty and security.”
They got nowhere.
In its report, Amnesty International urged the Canadian government to fashion a “comprehensive approach to addressing this problem,” and suggested a complaint hotline.
That has not happened.
In 2016, a Chinese-Canadian human rights lawyer, Guo Guoting, volunteered himself as an arbiter between Sheng Xue and Mr. Fei.
He considers both friends.
Mr. Guo moved into Sheng Xue’s home for a month and began researching the attacks.
But his computer was hacked, he said, and “all the documents disappeared.”
He never published his report.

American Colleges Hosted an Important Part of China’s Propaganda Set-Up. Now They’re Bailing Out.

Congress has demanded more scrutiny of Confucius Institutes.
By DAN SPINELLI

The patron saint of China's propaganda machine

When the University of Minnesota established a Confucius Institute, or center for Chinese language learning, in September 2008, it quickly turned into one of China’s overseas success stories. 

With its efforts to promote the study of Chinese among students “from preschool to 12th grade,” the Minnesota center won plaudits from Hanban, a Chinese government organization that oversees the institutes and China’s other international language partnerships. 

Three years after its opening, the Minnesota outpost was named a Confucius Institute of the Year and between 2014 and 2018, China contributed more than $1.2 million toward the Minnesota center’s operation, according to a report in the Minnesota Daily student newspaper.
In June, the university will cut ties with Hanban, and Minnesota’s Confucius Institute will close. University officials cited a desire to refocus “our China-related activities through a strengthened and enhanced China Center,” spokesperson Katrinna Dodge said in an email to Mother Jones. 

In doing this, Minnesota joins the ranks of roughly a dozen other American colleges that have abandoned their partnerships with Hanban amid increasing criticism of Beijing’s growing authoritarianism and hostility to free speech. 

“Most agreements establishing Confucius Institutes feature nondisclosure clauses and unacceptable concessions to the political aims and practices of the government of China,” the American Association of University Professors concluded in a 2014 report, which said the centers “function as an arm of the Chinese state and are allowed to ignore academic freedom.”
Beijing first imported Confucius Institutes to American universities in 2004, offering generous subsidies and even staff, but the centers have attracted controversy from the start. 

As retired Communist Party bigwig Li Changchun once said, these institutes are “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.” 

Marshall Sahlins, a University of Chicago anthropologist, called them “academic malware” with propaganda objectives “as old as the imperial era.” 

Many scholars and lawmakers wanted nothing to do with the institutes, which use an authoritarian government’s money to bankroll hundreds of classes and programs at colleges, high schools, and elementary schools. 

Now, as tensions between the US and China have increased, the White House, lawmakers from both parties, and the intelligence community have singled out Confucius Institutes as a nefarious symbol of China’s creeping influence.
In a January Senate hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray said China posed a threat “more deep, more diverse, more vexing, more challenging, more comprehensive, and more concerning than any counterintelligence threat I can think of.” 

He acknowledged last year that federal agents had targeted some Confucius Institutes with “appropriate investigative steps” over concerns of improper Chinese influence. 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced a bill last month that would require Confucius Institutes to register with the Justice Department as foreign agents, which quickly gained bipartisan support, and the most recent defense appropriations bill restricts schools with Confucius Institutes from receiving Pentagon language grants. “
“Foreign governments should not be funding student organizations on the campuses of democratic societies,” says Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, who examined Chinese influence in American higher education for a November report. 

“And certainly not the foreign government of authoritarian countries.”
In addition to citing concerns about transparency and censorship, lawmakers have also identified a glaring discrepancy between the freedoms afforded to Confucius Institutes in the United States and China’s crackdown on a similar slate of American-run centers abroad. 

In February, a bipartisan report from the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee on investigations identified “over 80 instances in the past four years” in which China interfered with State Department efforts to set up and access “American Cultural Centers” at Chinese universities. 

The US chose to stop funding the program last year amid continuing obstacles put in place by China. 

The report also noted that “nearly 70 percent” of US schools neglected to report Hanban contributions to the Department of Education, despite a requirement that postsecondary institutions report foreign gifts above a certain threshold.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the subcommittee’s top Democrat, released a statement with the report that compared China’s influence activities with Russia’s efforts to intervene in the 2016 presidential election. 

“Given what our country experienced during the 2016 election and what we’re preparing to grapple with in 2020,” he said, “it is critical that we be vigilant in combatting foreign efforts to influence American public opinion.”
Diamond does not consider Confucius Institutes a security issue on par with China’s increasing surveillance of its own citizens or its widespread theft of intellectual property, but he argues that unless contracts with Hanban are made public, and assurances put in place to ensure American law governs the centers, the agreements “should be terminated.” 

Gao Qing, a Chinese agent who directed George Mason University’s Confucius Institute and now runs a nonprofit in Washington, DC, that advocates for these centers nationwide, wrote in an email to Mother Jones that Confucius Institutes are meant to offer “apolitical educational programs” and not “engage with any political activity and do not teach politics and policies.”
Confucius, the ancient philosopher whose teachings fell out of favor after the Communist Revolution, became the perfect symbol for China’s renaissance when fifteen years ago, government officials formed a Chinese language-learning center in Seoul. 

More than a century after China ceded control of the Korean peninsula to Japan—and with it, wider influence over the Asia-Pacific region—Beijing was mounting a comeback in its own backyard. 

Who better to adorn the name of its signature foreign influence project than Confucius, a philosopher with a name much easier to market overseas than Marx or Mao.
In the United States, interest in learning Chinese had been rising, but a shortage of qualified instructors left school administrators searching for help. 

By 2008, only 3 percent of elementary schools with language programs taught Chinese. 

After planting roots in South Korea, in 2004, Chinese officials unveiled their first US outpost at the University of Maryland. 

Between 1991 and 1994, Annapolis had slashed funding for state universities by nearly 20 percent, resulting in dramatic cuts at College Park, the University of Maryland’s flagship site. 

Administrators eliminated eight departments and 23 degree programs, according to the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit education news site, so an infusion of Chinese funding looked even more appealing. 

But some faculty members became uncomfortable with the arrangement. 

David Prager Branner, then an associate professor of Chinese, told Mother Jones the agreement to accept funding from the Chinese government constituted a “betrayal of the University’s primary obligation: cultivating young minds and teaching them to cultivate themselves.”
“I imagine the prestige of having the first such Institute in the United States, plus generous (as we were told) funding, more than made up in their minds for the failure to apply normal academic standards,” he wrote in an email. 

He noted that the influx of new instructors with their Hanban-approved textbook “were not even vetted by the University’s own Chinese language faculty.” 

In an email to Mother Jones, a Maryland spokeswoman sent a statement from Donna Wiseman, the university’s Confucius Institute director: “As part of our partnership with Hanban, we are responsible for making decisions about the programs we offer to the community and the extracurricular activities we coordinate on campus.”“
The partnership is a tricky one, as administrators at the College of William and Mary discovered when the Dalai Lama received an invitation to speak on campus seven years ago. 

As the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, whose land has been under China’s control for centuries, the Dalai Lama is considered a “wolf in monk’s robes” by the Chinese government. 

His appearance at any American university would upset Chinese officials, but especially so at William and Mary, which months earlier had established its own Confucius Institute. 

Ahead of the visit, a university administrator flew to Beijing and briefed Hanban leaders as part of what two knowledgeable sources described as a tense, difficult conversation that included pushback from Chinese officials. 

Nonetheless, the visit went on as planned and the university’s Confucius Institute remains in operation with continuing support from Hanban.
The dust-up was awkward, but ultimately inconsequential for the university. 

Occasional controversies over transparency and improper influence, experts say, largely depend on administrators’ care in reviewing contracts and removing any questionable language from their agreements. 

Qing says Confucius Institutes “affirm the primacy of US law,” but Hanban’s website includes a set of bylaws that several administrators around the country found concerning. 

One line implies that Chinese law, with its noticeably weaker free speech protections, would ultimately govern Confucius Institutes on US soil. 

A current Confucius Institute director at an American college, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the partnership, said this part of the agreement had “to be watered down” for his school to participate. 

The Chinese officials did not object, he said, and seemed almost to expect the pushback. 

“Some of these nuances take time to learn,” he told Mother Jones. 

“Somebody may, without realizing it, sign the template thinking that’s the way to go forward.”

When George Washington University was first considering whether to form a Confucius Institute, faculty members were put off by a provision in Hanban’s generic agreement that its partners respect the “One China” principle which maintains that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China. 

The US formally adopted this policy in 1979, but the provision still concerned administrators who interpreted it as a backdoor way to stifle academic discourse about Taiwan. 

The university ultimately agreed to a contract, years later, when the provision was no longer required.
A common criticism lodged against Hanban is the secrecy of its contracts. 

“At most Institutes, the terms of agreement are hidden,” a report from the conservative National Association of Scholars found in 2017. 

The key to keeping institutes free of undue influence, several administrators and experts reiterated, involves vetting the contracts more rigorously. 

No matter how innocuous a single institute may be, now that President Trump’s foreign policy has appeared to settle on an adversarial approach to Beijing, it is likely that they will become increasingly isolated. 

Sen. Marco Rubio, one of the most persistent critics of China in Congress, expressed a growing Washington consensus when he asked during a Senate hearing this year whether China had become “the most significant counterintelligence threat this nation has faced, perhaps in its history but certainly in the last quarter century.”

Chinese Fifth Column

China-funded Confucius Institutes trying to influence US public opinion should be constrained
By Rich Edson

WASHINGTON -- Senators are considering legislation to constrain Chinese government-funded institutes they say are spreading propaganda and limiting criticism of China at hundreds of elementary, middle and high schools and colleges across the United States.
Confucius Institutes “depict China as approachable and compassionate; rarely are events critical or controversial,” according to a bipartisan report from the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. 

“The Chinese government approves all teachers, events, and speakers. Some U.S. schools contractually agree that both Chinese and U.S. laws will apply.”
In the last 15 years, the Chinese government has opened more than 100 Confucius Institutes on college and university campuses in the U.S. and are also in more than 500 primary schools, according to the report. 

Since 2006, according to the subcommittee, China has directly provided more than $158 million to U.S. schools for Confucius Institutes. 

Investigators said they found no evidence of espionage at the institutes as their investigation, they said, focused on propaganda and influence.
“That level of access stifles academic freedom and provides students and others exposed to Confucius Institute programming with an incomplete picture of Chinese government actions and policies that run counter to U.S. interests at home and abroad,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, the subcommittee’s chairman.
“Given what our country experienced during the 2016 election and what we’re preparing to grapple with in 2020, it is critical that we be vigilant in combatting Chinese efforts to influence American public opinion,” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., the subcommittee’s senior Democrat.

The subcommittee report cites Chinese government statements acknowledging their propaganda value to address criticism over human rights, Taiwan and individual freedom.

“We’re not against cultural exchange or language learning outright. We do view and recognize the value in this globalized world of cultural exchange, of foreign exchange, of language learning,” said a subcommittee investigator. 

“There are concerns schools need to be aware about how these things operate. And the public, faculty and students also need to be aware.”
The institutes, the schools they contract with and the Chinese government should reveal the details of their agreements, said the investigator. 

Without achieving that transparency, the investigator said senators are exploring legislation to address those concerns or would even pursue ways to shut them down.
In its study, the GAO found, “While 42 of 90 agreements include language indicating that the document was confidential, some agreements were available online or are shared upon request. Some officials at schools that did not post agreements online said this was consistent with handling of other agreements.” 

The report also read, “Nonetheless, school officials, researchers, and others suggested ways schools could improve institute management, such as by renegotiating agreements to clarify U.S. schools' authority and making agreements publicly available.”
Last year, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, sponsored a provision included in the National Defense Authorization Act that prohibits Pentagon funding of Confucius Institutes. 

He’s also pushed a bill that would lower the threshold for universities reporting foreign contributions from $250,000 to $50,000.
The subcommittee investigation found that nearly 70 percent of U.S. schools that received more than $250,000 from the Chinese government for Confucius Institutes failed to properly report those contributions to the federal government.
In 2010, the State Department granted more than $5 million to create American cultural events on Chinese campuses.
The department’s inspector general determined the U.S. effort was “'largely ineffective' in its mission due to Chinese interference” and closed the program late last year, according to the report.
“As China has expanded Confucius Institutes here in the U.S., it has systematically shut down key U.S. State Department public diplomacy efforts on Chinese college campuses,” said Senator Portman.
While there are more Confucius Institutes in the U.S. than any other country, the Chinese government has spent more than $2 billion expanding them across the world, according to the subcommittee.
“They show no signs of slowing,” said an investigator.

Rogue Nation

Everyone finally agrees China can't be allowed to take over the world
By James Jay Carafano

Oh my, how times have changed.
Huawei executives doing the perp walk. 

American universities shuttering Confucius Institutes. 

Voters in the Maldives, Sri Lanka and elsewhere rejecting leaders who have cozied up to China. Malaysia and others demanding better deals from Beijing or otherwise trying to dig their way out of the Chinese debt trap.
The days when people were OK with China taking over the world are coming to an end. 

Fast.
For years, supporters of Chinese policies argued that a rising China would grow to accept international norms and be a net contributor to global peace and prosperity. 

Meanwhile, critics made gloomy predictions that an increasingly powerful China would exert an increasingly destabilizing influence.
That argument is over.
Chinese telecom giant Huawei has become the posterchild for what’s wrong with China – and with good reason. 

Rather than act as a responsible global company from a responsible nation, Huawei has acted like a pirate on the high seas, abiding by no laws but its own. 

Now, the chickens are coming home to roost.
Headquartered in Shenzhen, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. describes itself as an “employee-owned” business, claiming that its approximately 80,000 employees hold almost 99 per cent of its stocks. However, the vast majority of those shares are controlled by a small group of people who enjoy close ties with the Chinese government and the Communist Party. 

Few people doubt that Huawei operates as an arm of the government, and U.S. intelligence agencies have warned American citizens not use the company’s products and services.
Meng Wanzhou, Hauwei’s chief financial officer, is under indictment for attempting to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran. 

She was arrested in December in Canada, and U.S. officials have now filed for extradition.
Separately, Huawei is also under indictment for engaging in illegal trading practices – mostly stealing stuff from T-Mobile. 

Stealing intellectual property from U.S. firms is nothing new for Chinese firms. 

Indeed, intellectual property theft is the centerpiece of the U.S. trade representative’s November report on Chinese business practices.
Oh, there are other charges as well, such as the Chinese government’s highly organized attempt to subvert international trade sanctions. 

But the trade report is replete with evidence that Huawei is not really a private company gone rogue. 

Rather, it appears to be just another corporate puppet on Beijing’s string, one deeply engaged in economic warfare.
But don’t blame the growing disenchantment with China on Huawei alone. 

It began two years ago, at the19th Chinese Communist Party Conference, when Xi Jinping laid out his expansive vision for China’s role in the global economy. 

His “Belt and Road Initiative” destined to encircle the world with Beijing’s golden tentacles; together with his expansive territorial claims, he surely caused the hearts of the party faithful to quicken.
But Xi also got the rest of the world rethinking the wisdom of handing China the keys to the global car.
Since then a great deal of research has been devoted to analyzing and illuminating China’s behavior. One notable report from Sharp Power explains how China manipulates information. 

Another, from the Center of International Private Enterprise, explains how China uses “corrosive capital” to undermine the rule of law and threaten democracy.
Today, countries that used to think of China as a benevolent checkbook are starting to question whether it was wise to turn over their telecom structure to a company that does the bidding of an aggressive foreign power with only its own interest at heart.
Now that China has the world’s attention, the question is: What’s next? 

This is no time for a new Cold War, but the Trump administration has been right to let China know that corrupt business practices and expansionist territorial claims will not go unchallenged. 

The U.S. can and must defend its interests for the long term.
The dust-up over Huawei aside, there’s a good chance the U.S. and China will cut a trade deal in the next 30 days. 

That would not be a bad thing. 

Even a limited deal, for a limited time, would show that Washington has Beijing’s attention, improve some market access for the U.S., and remove uncertainties from global markets.
As for dealing with rogue companies like Huawei, the U.S. should emphasize the necessity of abiding by the rule of law. 

Washington must not trade away criminal prosecutions in exchange for trade deals or other “concessions” from Beijing. 

When people break the law, they should be prosecuted for their crimes – not be used for negotiating “leverage.”
Similarly, per the Huawei/T-Mobile case, Chinese companies that steal trade secrets should be subject to the full range of legal punishments, including sanctions as well as criminal prosecutions.
Further, companies that knowingly use stolen intellectual property should be considered traffickers in stolen goods (a federal offense). 

Once convicted, they should be punished the way any company or individual would be for trafficking in stolen physical goods.
The world is wising up to Beijing’s “good guy” act. 

It’s time for China to pay the piper.

China's Trojan Horses

U.S. Universities Shut Down Confucius Institutes

https://chinadigitaltimes.net

Amid rising concerns of curtailed academic freedoms, U.S. universities are increasingly closing down Confucius Institutes, which are Chinese government-funded centers offering Mandarin-language and "cultural" courses that at one point numbered over 100 in North America alone.
Samuel Brazys and Alexander Dukalskis, authors of a new AidData working paper on the topic, write in the Washington Post that the institutes have had limited success in improving China’s image abroad as part of a broader soft power campaign.
A year ago, a group of UMass Boston students, alumni, and professors asked to meet with the chancellor to discuss concerns that the campus’ Confucius Institute was promoting censorship and curtailing academic freedom.
Today, interim chancellor Katherine Newman cited nationwide concerns when announcing the university would be ending its 12 year relationship with the Institute. 
Instead, the university will pursue a partnership with Renmin University.
This closely follows closures at North Carolina State University and the University of Michigan.
At Commonwealth Magazine, Colman M. Herman reports:
The Chinese government says it promotes the Confucius Institutes throughout the US as tools for "cultural" exchange. 
The institute at UMass offered non-credit classes in Chinese language and culture, programs for UMass students to study in China, professional development programs for Chinese language teachers, and Chinese proficiency testing. 
UMass Boston paid the director’s $100,000 salary and provided office space, while China provided $250,000 and paid the salaries of four or five teachers.
[…] Others have expressed concern that the Confucius institutes are used by the Chinese government as outposts for espionage. 
The FBI has said that it monitors the activities of the institutes.
US Rep. Seth Moulton has also raised concerns publicly about the institutes and in a private discussion with Newman. 
On his Facebook page, Moulton said the intent of the Confucius Institutes is to “distort academic discourse on China, threaten and silence defenders of human rights, and create a climate intolerant of dissent or open discussion.”
Twelve other academic institutions, including the University of Chicago, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Michigan, the University of Rhode Island, and Texas A&M, have severed ties with Confucius Institutes. 
Tufts University in Medford has said it will soon decide on whether to renew the school’s agreement with its Confucius Institute. [Source]
Cornell suspended exchange and research programs with Renmin University after it blacklisted and monitored over a dozen Renmin student labor activists.
The University of South Florida closed its 10-year old Confucius Institute on New Year’s Eve, citing declining enrollment in Chinese studies rather than national security concerns.
At The Tampa Bay Times, Howard Altman and Megan Reeves report:
USF said only 65 students total were enrolled in its four Chinese courses this fall, compared to 191 in spring 2014.
[…] However, university officials did concede that the national security concerns of U.S. government officials played a role in the decision — specifically when it comes to federal funding. 
In August, President Donald Trump signed the $717 billion 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. 
Inside is a provision that limits federal funding to colleges and universities with Chinese ties, and the provost said USF was unwilling to pass on those funds.
[…] USF World vice president Roger Brindley, whose division manages the university’s global partnerships, led the inquiry. 
It was started soon after U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio wrote letters to USF and four other Florida schools with Confucius Institutes in February, urging leaders to end their relationships with the Chinese government.
[…] The institutes are “cogs in a larger wheel” of effort by China to increase its global influence through the acquisition of science and technology, Giordano said. 
Having such a physical presence on campuses provides the Chinese government with the potential to gather data and intelligence “that can be leveraged for other agendas, whether economic and market or … national security.”
[…] “But there is no direct history of that,” Giordano said, adding that calls to close the institutes is more of a preventative measure than a response to any specific threat. [Source]
At Inside Higher Ed, Elizabeth Redden details the changing reasons as to why American universities are increasingly closing down the institutes:
[University of Chicago professor] Marshall Sahlins said he thinks the main reason for the closures is “pressure from the American right, including the National Association of Scholars [which issued a critical report of CIs in 2017], as well as lawmakers, and from security agencies of the U.S., notably the FBI: a coalition of political forces responding distantly to the developing Cold War with China — raising even older terrors such as Communism and the Yellow Peril — and proximately to drumbeat rumors that CIs are centers of espionage. 
Those that give other, face-saving reasons are probably protecting their academic cum financial relations to China, such their intake of tuition-paying mainland students.”
“Apparently the tide is beginning to turn, though for the wrong reasons,” Sahlins said. 
“As I said in my Inside Higher Ed op-ed last year, we are now in a pick-your-poison, lose-lose situation: either keep the CIs or allow the U.S. government to interfere in the curriculum — mimicking the Chinese [Communist] Party-State.”
[…] Other institutions that have announced closures of Confucius Institutes within the last 12 months include the Universities of Iowa, Michigan at Ann Arbor and Minnesota at Twin Cities and North Carolina State University. 
In addition to these institutions, Tufts University has charged a committee with reviewing its CI, and a decision on whether to renew the CI agreement when it expires in June has not been made yet pending receipt of the committee’s recommendations.
The recently announced closures follow on closures of the CIs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 2017; Pennsylvania State University, in 2014; and the University of Chicago, where more than 100 faculty members had signed a petition calling for the closure in 2014. 
North of the border, in Ontario, McMaster University closed its CI in 2013 after a visiting instructor from China claimed the university was “giving legitimization to discrimination” because her contract with Hanban — the Chinese government entity that sponsors the institutes — prohibited her participation in the religious organization Falun Gong. [Source]
Concerns over China’s curtailing of academic freedoms have also been prevalent within China. 
In December, British academic publisher Taylor and Francis acquiesced to Chinese government requests and dropped over 80 journals from its China offerings due to “inappropriate” content. 
This followed the August 2017 saga of Cambridge University Press reversing its decision to hide from Chinese users 315 journal articles and 1,000 e-books covering the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, policies toward Tibetans and Uyghurs, Taiwan, and the Cultural Revolution.
This also coincided with the Association of Asian Studies receiving—and refusing to honor—similar censorship requests for articles also largely focused on Tibet and the Cultural Revolution.
Meanwhile in Africa, whose Confucius Institutes have been questioned for their ability to adequately train China-bound African scholars, Kenya will start teaching Mandarin to elementary school students in 2020, with the primary goal of increasing job competitiveness and deepening trade ties with China.
Additionally, the Chinese government is providing Uganda with textbooks and tutors for its new compulsory Mandarin courses, which are currently mandatory for the first two years of secondary school at 35 schools.
This follows South Africa’s decision to offer Mandarin in early 2016—despite strong resistance from teachers’ unions.