China rejects US 'stigmatisation' of Confucius Institutes after Pentagon security-threat label

BEIJING: China opposes US “smearing and stigmatisation” of Confucius Institutes, its foreign ministry said on Monday, after the US Defence Department designated the Chinese-funded cultural centres on university campuses a threat to US national security on Friday.

Educational exchanges between China and the US are mutually beneficial and help deepen mutual understanding, foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told a regular press briefing on Monday when asked about the designation, according to Reuters.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth alleged on Friday that Confucius Institutes were operating in disguise at US universities and that the Pentagon had added them to its list of institutions that threaten US national security. He alleged that 80 successor organisations had sprung up across 30 universities “using different names and different charters, but with the same mission: to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students”, and said the department had over the past two months “systematically dismantled every single one of these organizations”.

China’s official Xinhua news agency on Sunday called the national security threat label “an absurd overreach, exposing some US politicians’ warped threat perceptions and their dangerous political calculus of stoking anti-China sentiment ahead of the midterm elections”, Reuters reported.

Washington has long accused Confucius Institutes of being Chinese propaganda tools and has taken steps to crack down on them, Reuters added. The statement is Beijing’s first foreign-ministry response since the Pentagon designation reported by Flip News on 24 October.