On one front, at least, President Biden is already making a gift to Beijing, even if that is not his reason. His “No Trump” rule seems to be a higher priority than checking China’s power: why not, the last president’s term requiring schools and universities to disclose any connection that their programs of change with the Confucius Institutes controlled by Beijing?
The last president approved the order in late 2020, in response to growing concern from the FBI, the State Department and the Department of Education that China’s rulers use the Confucius Institutes to steal northern investigations -American and to promote Chinese Communist Party propaganda in schools in the United States.
Confucius Institutes operates in 75 American universities, officially offering cultural and linguistic enrichment. And 500 K-12 schools across the country have a partnership with the U.S. Confucius Institute in DC, which the State Department designated in August as Beijing’s “foreign mission.”
The canceled order did not close any Confucius programs, but kept them on federal radar. Following the news, in December, some 20 of the top universities had not reported at least $ 6.5 billion in funding from foreign sources, including China. Perhaps the elite universities, eager to keep their funding secret, managed to get the Biden team to end the reporting requirement.
But the result is to relax the examination of institutions that covertly spread the “influence of the CCP in academia,” as Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said.
Something sad for any president, either to avoid embarrassment for national special interests or to simply remove a piece of his predecessor’s legacy.