Rep. Jim Banks Demands Answers on DOD’s Waiver Plan for Colleges Hosting Confucius Institutes

Are U.S. colleges putting national security at risk by hosting Beijing-funded Confucius Institutes (CIs)? Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) thinks so and has expressed his concerns to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Banks highlighted how CIs act as agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on U.S. campuses, spreading Party propaganda, monitoring students and dissidents, and providing China with a launching pad for espionage against our nation’s most valuable research and technology.

While a section of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act bars U.S. institutions of higher education from hosting Confucius Institute programming after October 2023, the Defense Department has adopted new waiver criteria that allows colleges to receive DOD grants without closing any CIs on campus. Banks argues that the waiver guidance fails to take seriously the threat posed by CIs to national security and provides a loophole that theoretically allows universities to continue operating with CIs for an unlimited duration.

CIs are funded and supervised by the Chinese authorities and have longstanding and formal ties to the CCP’s foreign influence operations. The Chinese regime has poured more than $158 million into over 100 U.S. colleges through CIs, leading to increasing scrutiny from U.S. officials over their roles in encroaching on academic freedom and facilitating the CCP’s intellectual property theft. While some colleges have shut down their CIs in recent years, there are still 13 CIs remaining open in the United States.