Schools are supposed to be hallowed halls of learning, where young people grow and mature.
But they also can be targets for people, groups, or a country, seeking to influence students. That’s what the Chinese Communist Party has been trying to do in the United States in the last decade, according to critics of Confucius Institutes and other programs stealthily introduced into American schools and colleges.
Michael Quinn Sullivan, publisher of Texas Scorecard and host of “Exposed,” a serial podcast, examined this educational intrusion in an episode of the podcast’s third season, titled “The Chinese Infiltration of Texas.”
In the third season’s opening episode, Texas Scorecard examined land being purchased by the Chinese government and its front groups. Schools were the focus of Episode 2, and there is a connection between the two topics. In Texas, property taxes fund K-12 schools and the state’s mineral rights fund public universities.
“Land is synonymous with education, whether it's the property taxes that fund K-12 schools or the state's mineral rights that fuel our flagship institutions,” Sullivan said.
He began by talking about his alma mater, Texas A&M, one of the original land grant colleges under the Federal Moral Act of 1862 and the first public institution of higher education in the Lone Star State.
“It’s an institution steeped in the traditional values of rural Texas that wears its unabashed American patriotism on its sleeve,” Sullivan said. “Texas A&M commissioned more officers into the United States military than any school except the three service academies. Many of the state's oilmen, like the father of fracking, the late George P. Mitchell, have been Aggies.
“We Aggies love our history," he added. "We proudly display it on our clothes, on the back of our pickups and everywhere else. But no matter how hard you look in the marketing materials, the student yell practices or the new student guide, there’s no mention of the university’s relationship with Communist China.
"Texas A&M was among the first in the state to host a so-called Confucius Institute," he said. "Let’s be clear up front. Most of these institutes, including the one at Texas A&M, have been shut down or renamed or merged with other more innocuous-sounding programs. But how they started? Why? And the eagerness of school officials to embrace them. Well, that's all very revealing.”
Sullivan said a front group, Hanban, provided Texas A&M a start-up fund of $100,000 in 2007 and materials to push China into Texas and on to the rest of Texas. Another $120,000 was added in 2013.
Confucius Institutes are a public education and cultural program funded by the Chinese government and administered by the Chinese International Education Foundation, formerly known as Hanban. Their mission is, in theory, to promote Chinese language and culture, support local Chinese teaching internationally, and facilitate cultural exchanges. However, these institutes have been criticized for actually serving as a means for the Chinese government to infiltrate the U.S. educational system.
After political criticism of Confucius Institutes, Hanban was rebranded by the Chinese government as a nonprofit organization known as “CLEC,” or the Center for Language Education and Cooperation.
“The agreement between A&M and Hanban stated the front group would provide multimedia courseware and other teaching materials, supplementary materials and audiovisual materials authorized by the Jon Bond headquarters, and to authorize the use of each online course offered by the Institute at Texas A&M,” Sullivan said.
“What were they funding?" he asked. "They were funding a Confucius Institute using the name of an ancient Chinese philosopher as a Trojan horse. Confucius Institutes were set up to appear as an international network of educational programs, providing Chinese language instruction, organizing cultural activities and hosting Chinese speakers.”
The reality is, these organizations have a secondary political purpose that transcends the teaching of basic Chinese language and culture, critics charge.
In 2011, Li Changchun, a former member of the Chinese government, described Confucius Institutes as “an appealing brand for expanding Chinese culture abroad. It has made an important contribution toward improving our soft power. The Confucius brand has a natural attractiveness using the excuse of teaching Chinese language. Everything looks reasonable and logical.”
A year earlier, in 2010, China’s minister of propaganda, Liu Yunshan, was more blunt about it.
“We should actively carry out international propaganda battles against issues such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, human rights and Falun Gong,” Yunshan said. “We should do well in establishing and operating overseas cultural centers and Confucius Institutes.”
China’s former president, Hu Jintao, said the institute’s purpose was to increase CCP influence around the world.
Texas A&M hasn’t been the only university in the Lone Star State with ties to Chinese government, either, Sullivan said. A Confucius Institute was also being set up at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2008, and one followed at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2010. Texas Southern University got one in 2012.
China didn’t only target college campuses. The Houston Independent School District was paid by the Chinese government to begin a program there, Sullivan said.
“These Confucius Institutes weren’t just about indoctrinating college students, but digging even deeper into our educational culture,” Sullivan said. “In schools around the state, Confucius classrooms, the K-to-12 sibling of Confucius Institutes, were being quietly established. In each case the Confucius Institutes and classrooms were provided money, curriculum and planted teachers in our institutions.
“Think of the irony here. Public school bureaucracies constantly shout about local control and decry any attempts by state lawmakers to put transparency or accountability into public schools,” Sullivan said. “And yet, those same schools are willing to let the communist Chinese government set curriculum and hiring. With 1,235 school districts, many of which do their best to avoid answering direct questions, the exact size and scope of the Confucius Classrooms network in Texas’ K-12 schools remains a mystery.”
He said the influential College Board, which sets the curriculum and standards for advanced placement classes in Texas and around the nation, and produces the SAT college entrance exam, also has deep ties to China through Hanban, the Chinese government front group that runs the Confucius Institutes.
Sullivan said the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in Texas public education and higher education systems isn’t limited just to Confucius Institutes.
“For example, the University of North Texas in Denton has 46 agreements in place with the various Chinese universities and institutions. Some, maybe most, are innocuous. But we don’t know for sure,” he said. “What we do know is that 13 of the Chinese universities with which UNT is partnering have been flagged as security risks by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. And while their Confucius Institute no longer exists, Texas A&M has other ways of collecting cash from China. For example, a 2016 agreement saw China’s Ocean University and Texas A&M collaborate on ocean and climate research.
China agreed to pay $1.3 million to A&M in installments of $419,000. In return, A&M would pay Ocean $350,000. Whether Texas A&M has any current or pending agreement with any other Chinese university remains to be seen.
The University of Texas at Austin is also involved with China. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s database of foreign gifts and contracts, from 2012 to the present day, UT-Austin received contracts and gifts from the Chinese government totaling $6.3 million. Most of these funds are funneled through China’s state-owned petroleum companies, along with other state-controlled companies like Huawei.
Donald Trump's administration identified Huawei as a security risk in 2020 and the British government banned them from their 5G network. Interestingly, UT-Austin also received four gifts from China’s Ministry of Education from 2012-15, amounting to a total of $140,000, but declined to provide specifics.
Texas Scorecard has found considerable resistance as it tries to ascertain how many Texas schools have taken money from China to establish programs.
Confucius classrooms operated in Houston’s Sharpstown International School and the Houston Academy for International Studies, as well as in the Ysleta Independent School District, San Antonio’s North East Independent School District and the Coppell Independent School District in Dallas County.
“Typical was the arrangement of the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District,” Sullivan said. “You could find almost no mention of their participation in the Communist Chinese program on their website, but payments assigned to their Confucius classrooms account appeared in their records.
It’s been a struggle to report all this, he said. Texas Scorecard has been “stonewalled by universities and school districts alike,” Sullivan said.
Robert Montoya, who oversaw the research for the series, said there has been a distinct lack of cooperation from these publicly funded schools.
“The University of Texas, Dallas and Houston ISD are fighting to prevent the release of information,” Montoya said. “They don’t want us seeing records regarding these CCP-backed organizations.”