The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) said all but five Confucius Institutes, established in 2004 to promote the Chinese language, have now closed.
The number is down sharply from 2019, when the GAO found 96 Confucius Institutes operating in 44 states. At that time, only six states had no colleges or universities with Confucius Institutes.
The Confucius Institute Chinese Chess Championship in Beirut, Lebanon. Very few such institutes remain in the US. Photo: SCMP
The decision comes as tensions between the US and China have escalated since the Trump administration, leading to a surge in export controls, sanctions, tariffs and repeated diplomatic incidents.
The two sides are only just beginning to try to get the relationship back on track, and US President Joe Biden is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in San Francisco later this month.
Trump administration officials have initiated attacks on Confucius Institutes. According to Kimberly Gianopoulos, director of trade and international affairs at the GAO, the main reason American universities are abandoning Confucius Institutes is because of language in the 2019 and 2021 defense authorization bills that warn schools that they could lose federal funding if they keep the institutes.
Confucius Institutes teach classes on Chinese culture and language and are run by faculty and administrators from the host university with assistance from faculty at Chinese universities.
More than 60% of school administrators said they “to a large extent” considered the potential loss of federal funding as a reason to close institutes. Gianopoulos said the number of Confucius Institutes would likely drop to “one or two by 2024.”
Mai Van (according to SCMP)
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