Just weeks before Donald Trump’s second trip to China this year and his third meeting with President Xi Jinping, whom he has called a “truly great” friend, his administration is intensifying its crackdown on Confucius Institutes – Beijing-backed centres that promote Chinese language and culture at universities abroad.
Long viewed by critics as instruments of Beijing’s soft power and cultural diplomacy, the institutes are back in the crosshairs of US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who says the Pentagon has “systematically dismantled” organisations that resurfaced under new names.
Hegseth announced on Friday that the Pentagon had added what he described as Chinese government-backed organisations operating on American campuses to its list of institutions deemed threats to national security.
“Eighty new propaganda cells across 30 universities had popped up using different names and different charters, but with the same mission: to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students,” Hegseth said in a video posted to his official “Secretary of War” social media account.