CHINA: CHINESE FUNDING TO US UNIVERSITIES
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An article in the Journal of Higher Education highlighted that by 2016, Hanban, a propaganda arm of the Chinese government, had successfully established Confucius Institutes (CIs) at
15% of the largest institutions of higher education, including some of the most prestigious institutions, and in almost every state across the United States. China has established around 100 Confucius Institutes in the United States. According to disclosures to the U.S. Department of Education, from 2010 to 2017 the Chinese Ministry of Education provided more than $17 million to U.S. universities—although the total sum is almost certainly higher, since universities do not need to report transactions under $250,000. This large sum of Chinese funding has made scholars, academics and universities cautious of doing anything that would jeopardise this funding or their getting visas to travel to China.
(Comment: In 2009, Li Changchun, then a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top decision-making body, called Confucius Institutes “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda apparatus,” and in a 2011 speech at the Beijing headquarters of the Confucius Institute, he called them an “appealing brand,” adding that “using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical.”)
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