In 2009, Li Changchun — the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda chief at the time — called Confucius Institutes "an important part of China's overseas propaganda set-up." And American universities still took the money.
Seventeen years later, the Pentagon finally treated those words like a confession.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on October 23 that the Department of Defense has formally designated Confucius Institutes as a national security threat and convinced universities to shut down more than 80 research partnerships across 30 American universities. Hegseth didn't sugarcoat it: "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."
The institutes first appeared on U.S. campuses in 2004, funded through Hanban, an arm of China's Ministry of Education. By 2017, they'd spread to 118 American colleges. The pitch was simple — free Mandarin classes, cultural exchange, a little money for the host school. The reality was something else entirely. Beijing was embedding operatives inside American research institutions, gaining access to federally funded projects, and running what amounted to a soft-power intelligence operation in plain sight.
Congress started pushing back years ago. The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act cut Pentagon funding to universities hosting the institutes. Section 1286 of the fiscal 2019 NDAA required the Defense Department to audit university research partnerships with foreign governments. The fiscal 2021 NDAA barred funding entirely unless the school obtained a waiver. By 2023, fewer than five institutes remained under their original name.
But the CCP adapted. They rebranded. New names, new charters, same mission. That's what the Pentagon's October 19 audit uncovered — the same Chinese government-funded operations running under fresh labels at dozens of schools that had supposedly closed their Confucius Institutes years ago.
Rep. John Moolenaar, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, put it plainly: "Americans' tax dollars should never subsidize China's military ambitions and our universities must do more."
The universities, predictably, will frame this as an academic freedom issue. Rachelle Peterson, Policy Director at the National Association of Scholars, has spent years documenting how the institutes operated — curriculum vetted by Beijing, topics like Taiwan and Tiananmen off-limits, Chinese nationals on campus monitored by institute staff. Academic freedom was exactly what the CCP was suppressing. The schools just cashed the checks and looked the other way.
The Pentagon's action also added to a broader restricted list that now includes 130 institutions across China, Russia, and Iran — roughly 70 percent of them Chinese. That number has been climbing since former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center as a "foreign mission" on August 13, 2020. The current administration took the next logical step: treating the campus satellites the same way.
One hundred and eighteen institutes at their peak. Fewer than five by 2023. Eighty shadow replacements discovered and shut down in a single audit. The CCP's propaganda chief called them exactly what they were in 2009. It took us seventeen years to listen.