Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Guest contributor Yuan Ren wrote the lead story in China Note this week.
President Donald Trump’s increasingly hawkish attempts to limit China’s influence in the United States broadened into cultural territory last week, when the State Department ordered the Washington headquarters of China’s state-funded Confucius Institutes to re-classify as a foreign mission in the U.S., much like its consulates and embassies. The Trump administration claimed that the government educational organization was under significant control of the Chinese Communist Party and promoted its interests abroad.
In a press statement on Aug. 14, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the Confucius Institute headquarters in Washington “an entity advancing Beijing's global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K-12 classrooms.” The new designation, he said, would help American educators decide for themselves if they want to host such programs.