Confucius Institutes have become synonymous with Chinese Communist Party outreach tools in recent years, and many countries around the world have realized this by closing their Confucius Institutes on campus.
According to an Associated Press report, the University of Southern Maine (USM) plans to close the Confucius Institute and cut ties with the Communist Party-funded language teaching program. Marc Glass, director of public affairs at the University of Southern Maine, said the Confucius Institute has too few students and that the university will continue its commitment to people-to-people exchanges, enhancing global understanding and promoting cross-cultural learning.
This is another university in the U.S. that has closed its Confucius Institute after Tufts University in March, and there have been more than 50 Confucius Institutes closed worldwide. The University of Bergen in Norway and the University of Trier in Germany also announced their closures in March and the day before yesterday, respectively.
In March, 21 members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Education calling for the promotion of Chinese language education in Taiwan to replace Confucius Institutes so that American students can study in an environment free of speech censorship and threats.
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