In a further upgrading of Mike “Armageddon” Pompeo’s psy-war against China, the State Department announced today that the Confucius Institute of the United States would henceforth be declared an arm of the Chinese government. In practice this means that they must submit a list of their personnel, their real estate holdings, their operations, etc., to the U.S. State Department. State Department briefers today told reporters that this didn’t mean shutting down Confucius Institutes at U.S. universities, or even that the individual Confucius Institutes are themselves designated as “foreign missions.” The measure does, however, affect the operations of the CIUS headquarters in Washington, which helps provide logistical support to the various Confucius Institutes throughout the country.
More importantly, it sends a signal to the universities that do sponsor Confucius Institutes to “rethink” their decision, as indicated in a statement by Pompeo: “The goal of these actions is simple: to ensure that American educators and school administrators can make informed choices about whether these CCP-backed programs should be allowed to continue, and if so, in what fashion. Universities around the country and around the world are examining the Confucius Institutes’ curriculum and the scope of Beijing’s influence in their education systems.”
