WASHINGTON — The US Defense Department has designated Chinese-funded cultural centres on university campuses known as Confucius Institutes as a threat to US national security, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday, October 23, Reuters reported. In a video posted on social media, Hegseth said the Pentagon had added the institutes to its list of institutions that threaten US national security.

Source: Reuters

Hegseth alleged that the institutes were operating under disguise at US universities. "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," he said, according to Reuters. Those characterisations are the Defense Secretary's allegations; Reuters reported that the Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and no official Beijing response had been reported.

Source: Reuters

The Defense Department over the past two months has "systematically dismantled every single one of these organizations," Hegseth said, Reuters reported. Washington has long accused Confucius Institutes of being Chinese propaganda tools and has taken steps to crack down on them; two months earlier, the Pentagon had ordered 30 unnamed US universities to audit their foreign research partnerships, including ties with organisations associated with rebranded Confucius Institutes, according to reporting summarised by Magna Bureau citing the South China Morning Post.

Source: Magna Bureau summary of Reuters / Thai PBS World / SCMP reporting

For Punjabi and other South Asian families in the US with children at American universities, the move is the latest step in a long-running Washington campaign against Chinese state-linked programmes on campuses — one that university administrators will now have to answer in their foreign-partnership audits.

Source: Reuters