Posted this morning from a comment and link provided by our very own newc.[LI] Many U.S. universities are cooperating with academic institutions embedded within Communist China’s military and nuclear weapons program, a report published this week warns.
"Dozens of U.S. universities maintain ties to Chinese universities that conduct defense research in support of Beijing’s military buildup, including work related to the country’s nuclear weapons program," the NBC News reported, citing the study titled "The Middle Kingdom Meets Higher Education" published by the the DC-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
Confucius Institute: Beijing’s Trojan Horse
The primary tool of China’s infiltration on U.S. college campuses are the Beijing-funded Confucius Institutes, the 68-page report authored by FDD’s Adjunct Fellow Craig Singleton found.
The report vindicates the position taken by former President Donald Trump’s administration, which took measures to weed out these Beijing-controlled institutes from U.S. universities.
In August 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described the Confucius Institutes operating at U.S. campuses as "an entity advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence." These institutes were working to recruit "spies and collaborators" at American campuses, Pompeo warned.
Following the tough stance taken by the Trump State Department, the number of Confucius Institutes have dropped from 113 in 2018 to 28 in 2021. The FDD report concludes that the "CI closures have significantly eroded malign Chinese influence on college campuses."
Even after their closure, the nefarious influence of CIs could be a lasting one, the report revealed:
The report vindicates the position taken by former President Donald Trump’s administration, which took measures to weed out these Beijing-controlled institutes from U.S. universities.