Ted Cruz Advances Effort to Defund Campus Confucius Institutes
“Cruz added the key amendment to “The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019”
Confucius Institutes have been a focus of sharp criticism for spreading communist propaganda.
Campus Reform reports:
Trump to sign Confucius Institute funding ban
President Trump is about to sign the new National Defense Authorization Act, which will prohibit funding to Chinese-run Confucius Institutes on American campuses.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz added the key amendment to “The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019,” which also restricts funding to universities that host Confucius Institutes and requires them to provide a public record of any agreements or contracts they have with the program, which has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Earlier this week, the White House confirmed that Trump plans to sign the bill during a visit to Fort Drum, New York, according to Fox-28.
In March, the Central Intelligence Agency issued a classified report labeling the institutes as a threat, according to an unclassified page of the document obtained by The Washington Free Beacon.
“The [Chinese Communist Party] provides ‘strings-attached’ funding to academic institutions and think tanks to deter research that casts it in a negative light,” the unclassified portion of the report reads. “It has used this tactic to reward pro-China viewpoints and coerce Western academic publications and conferences to self-censor. The CCP often denies visas to academics who criticize the regime, encouraging many China scholars to preemptively self-censor so they can maintain access to the country on which their research depends.”
There are currently an estimated 107 Confucius Institutes in America, according to a list last updated in July by the National Association of Scholars (NAS).
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