Ohio Congressional representative Anthony Gonzalez is seeking to prohibit universities from receiving funding if they host a Chinese-funded learning center called a Confucius Institute. Credit: Sabrina Eaton via TNS
Ohio Congressional Rep. Anthony Gonzalez is seeking to cut universities’ funding if they host a Chinese-funded learning center called a Confucius Institute.
Gonzalez (R-OH-16), a former Ohio State wide receiver from 2004-06, reintroduced H.R. 2622 to cut funding to universities with Confucius Institutes April 16. The language and cultural centers have faced increased political scrutiny over the past few years, with lawmakers attempting to limit the Chinese government’s influence on college campuses.
“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) poses the greatest threat to American sovereignty,” Gonzalez said in an April 16 press release. “From their rampant theft of American intellectual property, to their egregious acts of genocide in Xinjiang, it is clear that we must pursue a whole of government approach in holding the CCP accountable.”
Xinjiang, China, is a region of the country where the Chinese government has detained more than a million Uyghurs — Turkish Muslims — in “re-education camps” in the northwest corner of the region, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Detainees have been forced to renounce Islam, pledge support to the Chinese Communist Party and have been subjected to sleep deprivation, rape and torture.
Confucius Institutes are partially funded by the Chinese government and staffed with teachers trained in China. Some of the Confucius Institute’s contracts with universities involve clauses mandating that the institutes abide by Chinese law, which, with regards to some forms of political speech, directly conflicts with U.S. free speech laws. Ohio State is not home to a Confucius Institute.
Three Confucius Institutes remain in Ohio: one at the University of Toledo, another at the University of Akron and the third at Cleveland State University. The Confucius Institute at Miami University closed in 2020. Cleveland State and Akron did not respond to requests for comment, and Toledo declined to comment.
Although Ohio State is not affiliated with a Confucius Institute, Ohio State researcher and professor Song Guo Zheng was charged in July 2020 with using more than $4.1 million in federal grants to funnel research back to China to develop the country’s expertise in rheumatology and immunology as part of the Chinese Talent Plan, or the Thousand Talent Plan, a program the Chinese government uses to recruit scientists, academics and other experts to conduct work in China. He was also charged with making false statements about being employed in China at the same time he was employed at U.S. universities.
The bill would prohibit universities with Confucius Institutes from receiving federal funding unless they proved that their contract with the Confucius Institute included provisions to protect academic freedom and “prohibit the application of any foreign law” at the university. Gonzalez first introduced the bill with Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL-27) in 2020 as a companion bill to Sen. John Kennedy’s (R-LA), which was introduced in 2019 and passed the Senate March 4.
The National Defense Authorization Act, enacted Jan. 1, included a section stating that universities with Confucius Institutes could not receive funding from the Department of Defense. The number of Confucius Institutes in the U.S. peaked in 2019 at about 100 but has since declined to 50 as of April, with 10 more scheduled to close.
“[The universities] all say the same thing; that on the one hand, they found the CIs to be very valuable and they never had a problem with the directors or faculty acting in a political way to promote Chinese values,” Mel Gurtov, professor emeritus of political science at Portland State University and Confucius Institute researcher, said.
Despite the declining numbers of Confucius Institutes, Rachelle Peterson, director of policy at the National Association of Scholars, a conservative group that seeks to reform higher education, thinks Gonzalez’ bill does not go far enough to limit them.
“The State Department has found that these Institutes ‘exert malign influence on U.S. campuses and disseminate CCP propaganda,’” Peterson said in an email. “Because they allow the Chinese government to control what is taught about China, they threaten the academic freedom and integrity of American educational institutions.”
However, Gurtov said there is little evidence to support the claim that Confucius Institutes control what is taught on university campuses, and concerns about Chinese propaganda as well as academic freedom infringements are overblown.
In August 2020, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration proposed a rule that would require universities to disclose the details of their contracts with Confucius Institutes, but President Joe Biden’s administration has since abandoned the proposal.
