Leer en Español
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other senior GOP representatives urged President Joe Biden on Wednesday to “promptly resubmit the proposed rule regarding reports of Confucius Institutes to forge solutions in the face of “Chinese Communist Party threats to the integrity of U.S. education and research.”
In a statement published by The Epoch Times, McCarthy said that “addressing the CCP’s generational threat is a preeminent national security concern for the United States.”
“Among the multitude of threats we face from China, the CCP’s abuse of the U.S. academic system to steal sensitive research and technology, limit free speech, and engage in propaganda with our students is of particular concern,” he emphasized.
Confucius Institutes are presented as places to learn Mandarin, study Chinese culture and get a scholarship. They are funded and staffed largely by Hanban, a nonprofit organization that claims to be nongovernmental but is actually controlled directly by the CCP from Beijing, according to a report by the Senate National Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Investigations.
McCarthy referred to the rule submitted by the Donald Trump Administration to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on December 31, 2020.
Under the rule, universities and K-12 schools would have to disclose their financial ties with Confucius Institutes and affiliated Confucius classrooms.
McCarthy noted that Confucius Institutes currently operate in at least 60 universities and in about 500 Confucius classrooms in elementary and secondary schools across the country.
