Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) has introduced legislation that would prohibit Tennessee’s public colleges and universities from being associated with the Confucius Institute.
In a recent statement, Governor Lee said, “Colleges and universities are places where vigorous debates of ideas take place, not where foreign governments operate in the shadows.”
The governor cited the need for Tennessee to act after President Biden‘s administration, in February, decided to roll back a Trump administration rule. Trump’s rule required that basic Education schools and universities with foreign exchange programs need to disclose any ties to the Confucius Institute of the Chinese Communist Party.
Governor Lee said, “After the federal government withdrew this rule, Tennessee state government is taking action to provide Tennessee taxpayers with greater transparency on campus, for all foreign investments. I thank the university leadership for working with us to preserve the integrity of our state and national security.”
Governor Lee’s legislation is known as the “Transparency in Foreign Investment Act. In addition to prohibiting ties between public schools and the Confucius Institute, the bill requires public institutions to disclose foreign gifts and contracts and to reject gifts and contracts that pose a threat to national security.
The Washington Free Beacon reports that Tennessee has already done more than other states to shut down Confucius Institutes. The legislation, if approved, would ensure that there would be no future ties to the Confucius Institute.
Nonetheless, a new report from the American Security Institute shows that the Confucius Institute is rebranding itself to avoid public scrutiny as it tries to continue its propaganda machine. The report notes that there are still hundreds of Confucius classes operating in the United States, yet it is difficult to track their walks. In part, this is because Asia Society has quietly changed the name of the Asia Society Confucius Classroom Network to the Asia Society Chinese Language Partnership Network sometime around September 2020. It is unclear why the quiet rebranding is taking place, but it does relate to the Trump Administration‘s efforts to provide more transparency regarding Confucius Institutes.
In October 2019, Senator Josh Hawley (D-CA) urged the U.S. Senate to investigate China’s influence on U.S. education, with Hawley’s primary focus on the Confucius Institute.
Critics accuse the institution, as well as the Chinese Communist Party, of trying to control speech at U.S. universities, with University of Miami professors claiming that the Confucius Institute told them they were not allowed to discuss the Dalai Lama, Tibet, Taiwan, or the Chinese military.
Davidson, chief executive of the British Council, told the New York Times in 2012 that the Confucius Institute used funds to bribe universities in exchange for control of Chinese discourse on campus.
The Chinese are very clear about what they want to achieve,” Davidson said. The Chinese Communist Party seems to be saying, ‘We’ll only give you this money if you never criticize the Chinese Communist Party.”
Last August, Trump’s State Department designated the Confucius Institute USA (CIUS) as a “foreign affairs mission” of the CCP. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described the Confucius Institute USA as “an entity that advances the global propaganda and malign influence of the CCP on U.S. campuses and in basic education.
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