Belgian university closes its Chinese state-funded Confucius Institute after spying claims

• Song Xinning, former head of the Confucius institute at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, is a recruiter for Chinese intelligence and conducts espionage for China.
• The Belgian university says cooperating with the Chinese espionage is no longer consistent with its policies

By Stuart Lau

Confucius Institutes, the long arm of Chinese, espionage, have been established in almost 500 higher education institutions globally. 

One of Belgium’s leading universities has decided to close the Chinese state-funded
Confucius Institute on its campus, following accusations that the former head professor conducted
espionage for China.
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) confirmed that it would not extend its contract with the institute when the agreement expires next June, although it did not refer to the espionage claims.
The university said cooperation with Confucius Institute – whose stated aims include promoting Chinese language and culture and facilitating cultural exchanges – was “not in line with [our] principles of free research”, based on the information it had obtained.
“The university is of the opinion that cooperating with the institution is no longer consistent with its policies and objectives,” it said in a statement on its website.

Leading Chinese spy Song Xinning, pictured in 2016 at the University of Helsinki’s Confucius Institute, has been barred from entering a bloc of European countries. 

In October, Belgian security services accused Song Xinning, former head of the Confucius Institute at VUB, of working as a recruiter for Chinese intelligence.
The Belgian newspaper De Morgen reported that pro-China VUB had ignored a warning from the state security service about the institute’s activities.

Song was subsequently barred from entering the Schengen Area – comprising 26 European countries – for eight years.
In an earlier interview with the South China Morning Post, Song said Belgian immigration authorities had informed him on July 30 that his visa would not be renewed, because he “supported Chinese intelligence activities”.

Jonathan Holslag, an international relations professor at VUB and one of the most vocal critics of VUB’s Confucius Institute, called the university’s decision “brave”.
“This should stand as an example for many European universities,” he said. 

“It is also in the interest of Chinese students, because they are the main victims of the politicisation of academic exchanges and the suspicion that elicits.”
Confucius Institutes, which are overseen by China’s Ministry of Education, have been set up in more than 480 higher education institutions around the world. 

Over the past decade, they have come under increased scrutiny from Western governments over their links to Chinese espionage activities.Several of the institutes in the United States and Australia have been forced to close because of their undue influence on campus, while several Chinese "academics" and "researchers" have been investigated, dismissed and arrested in the US on charges of stealing intellectual property or failing to disclose funding ties with Chinese universities.
In Europe, the Confucius Institutes at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, Stockholm University in Sweden and University Lyon in France have all been closed.

Belgium — Den of Chinese spies and gateway for China

The host to EU institutions and NATO headquarters, the European nation is an alluring draw card for China: 250 Chinese spies were working in Brussels — more than from Russia.

By Alan Crawford and Peter Martin 

When a suspected Chinese spy was extradited to the US last year, the US Department of Justice praised the “significant assistance” given by authorities in Belgium.
Xu Yanjun was arrested in Belgium after going there to meet a contact “for the purpose of discussing and receiving the sensitive information he had requested,” the US indictment said.
Xu was charged with attempting to commit economic espionage, with GE Aviation the main target. The case is pending.
Belgium might seem an unlikely destination for a Chinese agent, but it is a den of spies, the Belgian State Security Service (VSSE) says.

It says the number of operatives is at least as high as during the Cold War and Brussels is their “chessboard.”
Host to the EU’s institutions and NATO headquarters, Belgium is an alluring draw card for aspiring espionage-makers. 

Diplomats, lawmakers and military officials mingle, sharing gossip and ideas, while Belgium’s strategic location makes it important to China in its own right as a place to exert its influence in Europe.
“The mere fact that we hold international institutions such as NATO and the EU makes Belgium a natural focus for China,” Brussels-based Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations research fellow Bruno Hellendorff said. 

“It’s common knowledge that there are many spies in Brussels, and these days espionage from China is a major and growing concern.”
German newspaper Die Welt in February cited an unpublished assessment by the EU’s European External Action Service that about 250 Chinese spies were working in Brussels — more than from Russia.

Famous Chinese spy Song Xinning

Song Xinning, a Chinese director of the Confucius Institute at VUB Brussels University, was in October barred from entering the EU Schengen area for eight years after being accused of espionage.
An insight into the methods employed by China are outlined in the Xu indictment.

His duties included obtaining trade secrets from aviation and aerospace companies in the US, “and throughout Europe.”He used aliases and invited experts on paid trips to China to deliver presentations at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, operated by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. 

He ensured targets carried a work computer whose data could be captured.
The US remains at the core of Beijing’s espionage activities — the head of the FBI in July said that China was trying to “steal their way up the economic ladder at our expense.”
Yet Europe appears increasingly in focus, with cases of interference by China identified in Poland, France, Germany and the UK.
“The Chinese are becoming far more active than they were 10 or 20 years ago,” said former British diplomat Charles Parton, who has more than two decades of experience of China.
Espionage is “the far end of the spectrum” of interference that ranges from academia to “technological spillover” — collecting data to send back to China for mining, London-based Royal United Services Institute senior associate fellow Parton said.
Belgium’s elite generally has a relaxed attitude toward China that can open it to charges of complacency. 

A fractured political system makes it harder to craft a unified strategy — there is still no government six months after elections.A delegation to China this month included four ministers responsible for trade relations — a federal minister plus one each for Dutch-speaking Flanders, Francophone Wallonia and Brussels.
Even as the EU adopts a more skeptical stance toward China — losing its naivety, as one senior European official put it — Belgium is opening the gates to Chinese investments in strategic areas from energy to shipping and technology.
Belgium is responding to China’s rise “in a pragmatic way,” stressing its advantages in areas such as logistics, while ensuring “attention to the sustainability of the projects and respect for international standards,” the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
“They [Belgium] have very advanced technologies that China needs,” said Renmin University Institute of International Affairs director Wang Yiwei 王義桅, a former Chinese diplomat based in Brussels. 

“Through Brussels you can access Europe and even the United States.”
He said that Chinese innovation is fast catching up with the US.
All nations make efforts to win over hearts and minds, and much influence-building is legitimate diplomatic activity, but there is also a gray zone and it can be “difficult to tell the hand of the Chinese state from a much more diffuse web of influence-peddling,” the European Council on Foreign Relations said in a 2017 report.

Flemish Quislings

Brecht Vermeulen, chairman of the Belgian parliament’s home affairs committee until losing his seat this year, joined parliament’s China friendship group soon after his election in 2014 as a lawmaker for the Flemish nationalist N-VA party, the largest group in the then-ruling coalition.
Over the course of his five-year term, Vermeulen made several trips to China, where officials briefed him on technological advances in artificial intelligence, facial recognition and cybersecurity.
During that time, N-VA policy evolved from sympathizing with efforts by some in Taiwan and Hong Kong to keep a distance from China, toward what Vermeulen called “Realpolitik.”
“I think we must open more doors to the Chinese and see how they react,” Vermeulen said in an interview in Ghent. 

“If they open their doors, too, then it’s good on both sides. Of course, we are a small country and China is enormous, but if we act in one way and there’s a reaction in the same way, then OK, we can proceed, step by step.”
Still, there are signs that the Belgian authorities are attuned to potential threats.
State Grid Corp of China, which has more employees than Brussels has inhabitants, in 2016 bid for a stake in energy company Eandis. 

A last-minute leak of a VSSE dossier urged “extreme caution,” citing the risk that Belgian technology could be used by the Chinese military, and a planned vote on the bid never took place.
Engaging with China’s influence apparatus is not without risks.
Filip Dewinter, a regional lawmaker with the far-right Vlaams Belang party, was investigated over his ties to an organization suspected of spying for China. 

The probe was dropped after it was found Dewinter had committed no crime.
“Maybe I had too much faith in these people,” De Morgen cited Dewinter as saying in February, adding that he was now “more informed” about Chinese espionage and the need “to be careful.”
However, while there is now “some strategic thinking” on China in Belgium, the institutional setup means it is not across the board, Hellendorff said.
He sees “little to no dialogue between regions on the implications of growing Chinese investment in the country, not only in economic terms, but also in terms of its impact on values and influence.”That lack of coordination between regions and layers of government allows Antwerp Mayor Bart de Wever to play an outsize role in ties with Beijing. 

Antwerp is home to Europe’s second-largest port and has a direct rail link to China.
Wang thinks bilateral relations are developing well.
“In Europe there’s a saying that small is beautiful,” Wang said. 

“Belgium is beautiful in the Chinese understanding.”

Chinese spy barred from entering Schengen Area

• Song Xinning, former head of Confucius Institute at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, worked as a recruiter for Chinese intelligence
• The Chinese spy has been banned from 26-nation free-travel zone for eight years

By Kinling Lo, Simone McCarthy, Stuart Lau, Keegan Elmer

A Chinese professor who headed a Confucius Institute in Brussels has been barred from entering the Schengen Area for eight years after being accused of espionage, amid growing scrutiny of the Beijing-run cultural offices that have been established at universities around the world.
Song Xinning, former director of the institute at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), had been accused by authorities in Belgium of supporting Chinese intelligence activities in the city.
The Schengen Area comprises 26 European countries that have abolished passport and other types of controls at their mutual borders.
The Belgian newspaper De Morgen reported on Tuesday that VUB had ignored a warning from the State Security Service about the institute’s activities. 

Song had acted as a recruiter for Chinese intelligence services and hired informants from the Chinese student and business communities in Belgium.
The Belgian government did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Famous Chinese spy Song Xinning.

Song is also a professor at Renmin University in Beijing.

He said he suspected the decision to impose the ban had been influenced by the United States FBI.

The Chinese spy speaks at the Confucius Institute of the University of Helsinki in 2016. 

Song said he was told by the Belgian embassy in Beijing in September about the ban on him entering the Schengen Area. 

He is now appealing the ruling with the help of a Belgian lawyer, who Song said was in possession of a report from Belgium’s security services that accused the academic of having ties to Chinese security officials, luring Belgian scholars to spy for China and making plans to retire to Belgium.
Song said he did know Geng Huichang, a former Chinese state security minister, as they had both taught at Renmin University, and admitted to mingling with European scholars at academic conferences in China.

Confucius Institutes, which are overseen by China’s education ministry, have been set up in more than 480 higher education institutions around the world. 

Over the past decade they have come under increased scrutiny from Western governments over their espionage activities.
Several institutes in the US and Australia have been forced to close due to allegations they had undue influence on campus, while several Chinese academics and researchers have been investigated, dismissed and arrested in the US on accusations of stealing intellectual property or failing to disclose funding ties with Chinese universities.
In Europe, the Confucius Institutes at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, Stockholm University in Sweden and University Lyon in France have all been closed. 

And the British Conservative Party’s human rights commission earlier this year launched a campaign for schools to stop partnering with the institutes pending the results of a review.
Ingrid d’Hooghe, a researcher at the Leiden Asia Centre and Clingendael Institute who specialises in higher educational ties between Europe and China, said scrutiny of Chinese academics was increasing in Europe.
Song’s case was an example of how authorities in Europe have been watching China more closely, she said. 

The Chinese spy, who has now returned to his job at Renmin University, spent three years living in Brussels with his wife. 

He also worked from 2007-10 at UNU-CRIS, a United Nations research institute in Bruges.
Song is expected to be replaced at VUB by Zhou Jun from Sichuan University, who is currently awaiting his visa.
Professor Jonathan Holslag, who works at VUB and is also a special adviser to the European Commission, said it was “not a surprise” that Song had been banned from entering Belgium.
“Song is a polite guy but the institute is clearly an instrument of propaganda … and shouldn’t be part of the academic community,” he said.
The worrying part was its ability to “identify young and bright students with a potential to join the EU at a later stage” and to influence young European students with an uncritical, positive view about China, he said.

Chinese Fifth Column

China is infiltrating US colleges to recruit spies, indoctrinate students

By Eric Shawn 

Born to spy: Chinese students in America

U.S. Intelligence agencies continue to warn of Beijing’s spying activities in the U.S. – including commercial espionage and the stealing of intellectual property.
“The Chinese counter-intelligence threat is more deep, more diverse, more vexing, more challenging, more comprehensive and more concerning than any counterintelligence threat that I can think of," FBI Director Christopher Wray testified at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last week.
And now, lawmakers are also focused on new allegations of China's attempts to influence American academia and public opinion.
A report from the director of National Intelligence is blunt: "China's intelligence services exploit the openness of American society, especially academia and the scientific community..."
"It is widespread and it is dangerous and this is legislation designed to stop that," Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz told Fox News about a bill he has re-introduced, The Stop Higher Education Espionage and Theft Act.
Its goal is to deter the infiltration by China of our country's universities, colleges and research institutions.
"Too many universities, I think, are gullible, are not realizing the magnitude of this threat," Cruz warned. 

"This is a concerted, organized, systematic threat to undermine our universities and undermine our economy and we need to be serious to combat it."
Several current and former Chinese students have been convicted in U.S. courts for espionage.

Chinese spy Ji Chaoqun -- who came to the U.S. on a student visa, attended Illinois Institute of Technology and enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve -- was assigned to provide Chinese intelligence officials with information from background checks on eight American citizens -- some of whom were U.S. defense contractors

Just recently, Ji Chaoqun, who had studied electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was arrested and accused of working for Chinese intelligence to recruit spies here in the U.S. 

He is now awaiting trial. 

But it is not just spying that Sen. Cruz is concerned about. 

He is also raising the alarm about a Chinese-backed academic program, The Confucius Institute, that currently operates on about 100 U.S. campuses.
The Institute, financed by Beijing and designed to provide education about the country's culture, is actually indoctrinating American students with regime propaganda. 

The National Association of Scholars published a 184-page study called "Outsourced To China, Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education." 

 It says the Institute suppresses academic freedom, lacks transparency, and is part of China's use of soft power intended to present China in a 'positive' light in order to develop a generation of American students with selective knowledge of a major country.
"I passed into law legislation targeting, in particular, the Confucius Institutes, institutes being funded by the communist government of China," Cruz said. 

"The FBI has raised concerns very specifically about the Confucius Institutes."

At a Senate hearing last year, FBI Director Wray acknowledged that worry.
"We do share concerns about the Confucius Institutes. We have been watching that development for a while. It is just one of the tools that they take advantage of," he said.
The National Association of Scholars is calling on Congress and state legislatures to open investigations to determine "whether Confucius Institutes increase the risks of a foreign government spying or collecting sensitive information."
"The key risk is that the American public and the students hear a one-sided view of what's going on in China," said Rachelle Peterson, policy director of the National Association of Scholars, who authored the study. 

She said the Institutes should all be shut down.
"At these Confucius Institutes, the teachers are hand selected and paid by the Chinese government, the textbooks are being sent over and paid for by the Chinese government, and funding is being provided by the Chinese government," she notes.
"The only way to protect from these type of incursions from the Chinese government is to close down the Institute. There really is no safe way to operate a Confucius Institute that protects academic freedom."
Cruz said its past time to send Beijing an even stronger message than just closing the Institute's doors.
"The Chinese communist government is a dictatorship, it is cruel and repressive. It tortures and murders its citizens, and dictatorships hate sunlight, they hate truth. We are sitting here in my Senate office, over my shoulder here," he said, pointing a large painting of President Ronald Reagan addressing the crowd in Berlin during his famous "Tear down this wall" speech in 1987. 

"This a painting of Ronald Reagan standing before the Brandenburg gate, and up above written in German are the words 'tear down this wall' in the style and graffiti on the Berlin wall. I think those are the most important words said by any leader in modern times."
The senator likens that call for freedom for the millions of people living behind the Iron Curtain, to one that he says is needed to tell Beijing today.
"That's what the Chinese government fears. They fear sunlight, so they spend money trying to stifle academic freedom in our universities and universities shouldn't be willing to sell their academic freedom, they shouldn't be willing to allow the communist government to have control over discussion."
Neither the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. nor Hanban, a public Chinese institution affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education, responded to requests from Fox News to comment about the allegations. 

But the Confucius Institute U.S. Center defended itself, by issuing a statement that said, in part:

"They are programs... dedicated to the teaching of Mandarin, cultivating Chinese cultural awareness, and facilitating global education... The programs do not teach history, politics, or current affairs... The courses are managed and supervised by U.S. universities which also decide the content, instructors, and textbooks."

But despite that defense, Rachelle Peterson has reservations.

"The American people need to know that what they are hearing about China may not be true. It may be influenced by the Chinese government's P.R. campaign, and even from the halls of academia, which are supposed to be trustworthy and respected, it may even be happening there."
She said at least 15 universities have shut down or are in the process of kicking the Confucius Institutes off their campuses, and more are expected to follow.
Senator Cruz says the University of Texas at Austin turned down Chinese funding.
“Thankfully U.T. made the right decision and said, ‘you know what, we are not going to take the Chinese money,’” he says.
“There is no doubt, in the long term, China is the single greatest geo-political competitor and threat to the United States,” Cruz warns. 

“The tools they are using are espionage and theft, and too many of our university officials are naïve to that threat, and just see free money, without the perils that are attached.”

Chinese Fifth Column

Florida university latest to cut ties with China's Confucius Institute

Reuters Staff

BEIJING -- The University of North Florida will close a campus branch of a Chinese-run cultural institute, the latest U.S. college to do so amid criticism from U.S. legislators that China uses the institute to influence American higher education.
The Jacksonville-based university said on Tuesday it had determined after “careful consideration” that the Confucius Institute, which opened a branch there in 2014 to promote language and culture, did not meet the university’s mission.
“After reviewing the classes, activities and events sponsored over the past four years and comparing them with the mission and goals of the university, it was determined that they weren’t aligned,” the university said in a statement.
It did not elaborate on the reasons for ending the partnership, but said the institute would be closed in February, fulfilling a legal obligations to provide six months’ notice for ending the contract.
The Confucius Institute headquarters in Beijing and China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio welcomed the university’s decision.
Rubio has been among U.S. lawmakers warning that the Confucius Institute was an effort by China to expand its political influence abroad and had contributed to censorship on U.S. campuses.
“I welcome the decision of @UofNorthFlorida to close its Confucius Institute. There is growing & well-founded concern about these Chinese Communist Party-funded Institutes. I continue to urge other FL universities to follow suit,” Rubio said on Twitter.
Rubio and other lawmakers have pursued legislation that would require universities to disclose major gifts from foreign sources, at a time when U.S. politicians, including President Donald Trump, but also many Democrats, have been pushing a harder line in dealing with China.
U.S.-China relations have suffered in recent months, with the two countries locked in an increasingly bitter trade dispute.
Several other universities in Florida still host the Confucius Institute, among more than 100 such centers around the United States.
Other major U.S. colleges, including Pennsylvania State University and the University of Chicago, have cut ties with the institute after professors complained its programs were Chinese propaganda wrapped in culture and language education.

How China Managed to Play Censor at a Conference on U.S. Soil

The Confucius Institute offers much-needed money to American universities — but with strings attached.
BY BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN

A Tibetan demonstrator flashes a V-Sign as he denounces the Olympic Games in Beijing on August 06, 2008 during a demonstration held in front of the Chinese embassy in Brussels. 

Taiwan was scrubbed from my biography.
I’d been invited to give a keynote speech and accept an award at Savannah State University’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communications.
In a description of my background, I’d listed the self-governing island as one of the places where I’d reported. 
But in the printed materials for the event, the reference to Taiwan had been removed.
The department had given the award annually since 1975.
But in the past few years, finances had dwindled and organizers struggled to find the resources to cover the expenses of bringing in a speaker from out of town.
Enter the Confucius Institute, a Chinese government-affiliated organization that teaches Chinese language and culture and sponsors educational exchanges, with more than 500 branches around the globe.
The branch at Savannah State, founded four years ago, agreed to sponsor the speech.
On campuses across the United States, funding gaps are leaving departments with little choice but to turn to those groups with the deepest pockets — and China is keen to offer money, especially through its global network of Confucius Institutes.
But when academic work touches on issues the Chinese Communist Party dislikes, things can get dicey.
The invitation came in part as a result of my work as the co-founder of an association for journalists who report on China.
I knew about the Confucius Institute’s underwriting.
Still, I didn’t want to prejudge, so I decided to attend, to focus my speech on China’s terrible human rights record, and to donate the honorarium to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In a banquet hall full of journalism students, I spoke on issues I’d been writing about for years: the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Chinese government repression of Uighurs and Tibetans, and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s crackdown on news outlets and the internet.
I could tell I was making at least one person uncomfortable — the Chinese co-director of the university’s Confucius Institute, Luo Qijuan.
When the event ended, Luo came over to scold me.
Speaking in Chinese, she asked why I had criticized China.
I should have given students a good impression of China, she said.
Didn’t I know that Xi had done so much for the country, that his anti-corruption campaign was working?
“You don’t know the situation now,” she told me.
“Things have gotten better.”
The opposite is true, of course.
Xi has overseen a sweeping crackdown across Chinese society. 
During his tenure, the Communist Party has jailed human rights lawyers, constructed a high-tech surveillance regime in the far west, implemented strict internet censorship, tightened media controls, denied Hong Kong the elections it had once promised, and crushed dissent.
As I later learned, it was Luo who insisted that the word “Taiwan” be deleted from my bio before the programs were printed. 
Luo told university administrators that its inclusion challenged Chinese sovereignty.
She threatened to boycott the event if it was not removed.
It wasn’t the first time Luo had tried to bring educational programs more in line with the Chinese Communist Party’s core interests. 
One administrator told me on the day of the event that Luo had tried, unsuccessfully, to block a teacher of Taiwanese heritage from participating in a Confucius Institute-affiliated program for local public school teachers.
Luo did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2009, North Carolina State University canceled a planned appearance by the Dalai Lama after its Confucius Institute director warned that the event might harm “strong relationships we were developing with China.”
At a China studies academic conference in Portugal in 2014, a Confucius Institute administrator objected to conference materials relating to Taiwan; the materials were confiscated, and Taiwan-related pages were ripped out of the conference programs.
At the University of Albany, the Chinese co-director took down posters related to Taiwan in advance of a visit by officials from Hanban, the office affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education that runs the Confucius Institute.
“Usually there aren’t explicit regulations about things that can’t be said. But there is a very strong understanding that certain topics are off limits,” says Rachelle Peterson, the author of a 2017 report about Confucius Institutes published by the National Association of Scholars, a conservative advocacy group.
“To speak about China in a Confucius Institute is to speak about the good things. The other things don’t exist as far as the Confucius Institute is concerned.”
Some universities are fighting back.
In 2013, McMaster University in Canada closed its Confucius Institute after one institute employee, who practiced Falun Gong, claimed she had faced pressure to hide her spiritual practice.
The University of Chicago closed its Confucius Institute in 2014, after a clash with a Hanban official.
Pennsylvania State University followed suit the same year.
Two Texas A&M branch campuses announced in April that they would close their institutes as well.
But it’s not always so simple.
Well-funded schools with established China studies programs have much more leverage over Confucius Institutes; the loss of a few hundred thousand dollars in programming can be replaced.
But for lower-profile schools with fewer resources, Hanban funding may be the only opportunity students and community members get to study Chinese or travel to China.
Those schools have a more difficult time pushing back against institute censorship.
Savannah State University does not have a well-funded Asian studies department, and as university administrators told me when I was there, its students and members of the surrounding community have few opportunities to travel abroad.
The young man working at the front desk of my hotel in Savannah told me he was going to China this summer with a dance troupe, on a trip sponsored by the Confucius Institute.
Without institute funding, the dancers would probably never see China.
And so, schools like Savannah State must walk a fine line.
“Often the American co-director is interested in supporting academic freedom and trying to manage the Confucius Institute in a way that is constructive,” says Peterson.
Each Confucius Institute has two co-directors, one American and one Chinese.
But that’s “really hard to do. And in some cases, well near impossible.”
Some U.S. lawmakers are now trying to make that balancing act easier.
The Foreign Influence Transparency Act, introduced this year by Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, and Rep. Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, would require Confucius Institutes to register as foreign agents, which would force the institutes to disclose their funding and activities to the Justice Department. 
The bill would also require universities to disclose foreign funding in any amount over $50,000.
If passed, the bill would help university administrators compare their own agreements with Confucius Institutes to those at other universities, allowing them to make more informed decisions about the conditions, benefits, and risks of partnering with an institute on campus.
But some analysts argue that scrutiny and transparency aren’t enough; if Americans want students who are educated and knowledgeable on China, then the U.S. government has to start matching Chinese efforts with money of its own.
That’s because, as universities face budget cuts, language programs are often the first to go.
Between 2013 and 2016, the number of students at U.S. colleges and universities enrolled in Chinese language classes fell from about 61,000 to just over 53,000, a drop of 13.1 percent, according to studies by the Modern Language Association.
By contrast, enrollment at the University of Mississippi’s Chinese-language program remains steady. The university is home to a U.S. government-funded Chinese Language Flagship Program.
It’s natural for universities like Savannah State to want to maximize opportunities for their students. But as long as money is tight and the Chinese government is ready to fill the funding void, Confucius Institutes will continue to have leverage over U.S. campuses.