Pentagon puts China-funded Confucius Institutes on US security threat list

A student (left) learns a Chinese dance at the Confucius Institute. The US says it is shutting down such centres as it deems them ‘propaganda tools of the Chinese Communist Party’. — Xinhua pic via AFP

First Published: Saturday, 24 Oct 2026 12:50 PM MYT

Last Modified: Saturday, 24 Oct 2026 12:58 PM MYT

WASHINGTON, Oct 24 — The US Department of Defense has designated Confucius Institutes, Chinese-funded cultural centres on American university campuses, a threat to US national security, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday.

Washington considers the centres to be propaganda tools of the Chinese Communist Party, and has taken steps to shut them down.

Hegseth said the Defense Department took action after such organisations had reappeared in disguised forms.

“We added these sleeper organisations to our list of institutions that threaten our national security,” Hegseth said in a video.

“It turns out that 80 new propaganda cells across 30 universities had popped up using different names and different charters, but with the same mission: to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students,” he continued.

Hegseth said that the Department of Defense had dismantled all the centres within the last two months. — AFP