The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative media outlet, revealed on January 1 that Biden‘s nominee for Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, a veteran diplomat and former defender of China’s Confucius Institute, is not considered a national security threat to the United States. The report said Biden’s nominee for State Department undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, a former defender of China’s Confucius Institute, does not believe she poses a national security threat to the United States.
According to reports, Nuland, who is expected to take over as undersecretary of state for political affairs, is seen as the third chair at the State Department, but her China position is being questioned as the U.S. struggles to keep Chinese influence out of the country.
At a press conference in 2012 when she was a spokesperson for the Obama administration, Lu Lan was asked if the White House was concerned that “the expansion of Confucius Institutes in the United States, funded by the Chinese government, would create the strongest Chinese soft power?” She responded, “No, this (Confucius Institute) is something that we support and is a conduit for people-to-people exchange and understanding between the United States and China,” further refuting concerns about China’s ambitions.
Not only that, Lu Lan also said at a press conference in 2011 that she welcomed “the rise of a prosperous, successful China” and that “we don’t see the rise of China as a threat, and we’re not going to try to deter it.”
During the Obama era, Confucius Institutes continued to be established in the U.S., exceeding 100 in 2017, despite warnings about the infiltration of Chinese Communist Influence, including a series of official reports alleging that the Chinese government has a high degree of control over Confucius Institutes, prohibiting taboo topics such as Tibet and Hong Kong from being discussed on the premises and requiring compliance with Chinese laws.
Lu Lan’s views on Confucius Institutes at the Time are expected to cause discussion in the Senate and have an impact on whether he can take over as Under Secretary of State. Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-SC) said, “Any would-be official who says good things about the Confucius Institutes is extremely troubling, and we cannot appoint people who have a naive or sympathetic view of the national security threat posed by China.”
The report by the nonprofit National Association of Scholars notes that the Obama-era Department of Education sponsored a conference for Chinese teachers in the United States co-sponsored by the Confucius Institute, and that several senior officials served as advisers to the conference.
Rachelle Peterson, the report’s author, said the Obama administration has repeatedly underestimated the Chinese government’s soft power initiatives and even endorsed the Confucius Institute, and that “both Lu Lan and Biden must prove themselves capable of protecting U.S. higher education from Chinese Communist interference.”
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