FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

Senate Report Objects to China Funding Education in U.S., Charges Schools Are ‘Propaganda Tools’

Feb. 28, 2019 (EIRNS)—The U.S. Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs issued a bipartisan report Feb. 27, condemning the China-funded schools in the United States, labeling them China’s “propaganda tools.”

The 93-page report demands for stringent controls to be placed on learning centers run by the Confucius Institutes, which operates at over 100 U.S. universities and receives funding from the Chinese government’s Ministry of Education. According to Time magazine’s coverage: “If the centers cannot be overhauled, the report says, they should be closed.”

The Confucius Institutes, which runs more than 500 centers globally, says its mission is providing Chinese language and cultural teaching resources and services worldwide, as well as contributing to the development of multiculturalism and the building of a harmonious world.

The Senate report, according to Politico,

“blasts the language and cultural centers at more than 100 U.S. universities as too strictly controlled and a threat to academic freedom. It accuses many American colleges of failing to disclose how much money they’ve received from the Chinese government, which the report says has spent more than $158 million on schools in the U.S. since 2006.”

The report also condemns the teaching of Chinese music, language, and culture in grade school and high schools, some in programs called “Confucius Classrooms.”