First posted on Instagram
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Friday that the Pentagon has designated Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes a threat to U.S. national security, accusing the campus cultural centers of operating as disguised Chinese propaganda operations at American universities.
In a video posted on social media, Hegseth said the institutes had been added to the Pentagon’s list of institutions that threaten American national security. “It turns out that 80 new propaganda cells across 30 universities had popped up using different names and different charters, but with the same mission: to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students,” Hegseth said, according to Reuters. The Defense Department, he added, had “systematically dismantled every single one of these organizations” over the past two months.
Washington has long accused Confucius Institutes of being Chinese propaganda tools and has taken steps to crack down on them, but the move marks the first time the Defense Department itself has placed the centers on a formal threat list.
The crackdown builds on years of pressure. In August 2020, the State Department designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center — the Washington-based de facto headquarters of the American network — as a foreign mission of the People’s Republic of China, citing its “opacity” and “state-directed nature.” The 2019 and 2021 National Defense Authorization Acts then restricted Defense Department funding for universities hosting Confucius Institutes, and the network shrank from about 100 institutes in 2019 to fewer than five by 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office.
What the designation actually does remains unclear. No written Defense Department statement or published directive had surfaced as of Friday night; the designation arrived as a video announcement rather than a memorandum or executive order, and its legal authority, criteria and consequences — whether funding cuts, contractual bans or visa actions — have not been disclosed. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported.