FARA should not apply to Confucius Institutes

Recently, several US Republican senators proposed a legislation that would require organizations such as the Confucius Institutes to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, according to a report published by the Washington Free Bacon on March 3.

The senators claimed the Confucius Institutes "limit free speech and exert control at American colleges and universities". However, this allegation is completely groundless as such claims go against the practice of Confucius Institute programs.

The FARA law defines "foreign agents" as any person conducting political or quasi-political activities "at the order, request or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal" in the US. Nevertheless, the CI program is totally disparate in nature.

To start with, the CI, as an educational and cultural program, is a part of its host institution in the US but not a separate entity. Each CI program is established out of the voluntary application of the host US institution, and is developed and managed by such host institution that ensures the program is in line with the host institution's mission, value, culture and tradition.

In 2019, the University of Tufts convened a committee chaired by Diana Chigas, senior international officer and associate provost of the university, to review the operation of its CI program in anticipation of the expiration of Tufts' Confucius Institute's memorandum of understanding.

The comprehensive review, submitted to senior leadership at the university and also published on its website, found that there was no evidence of undue influence, suppression of academic freedom or censorship at Tufts, and that students studying the Chinese language appreciated the CITU's extra-curricular language and cultural programming; moreover, the university's growing relationship with Beijing Normal University, which had been facilitated by the CITU, resulted in fruitful exchanges for US students and faculty.

Furthermore, CI programs aim to address the increasing demand for Chinese language education, and have provided life-changing educational opportunities for American students to engage with other parts of the world.

It has been proved in many occasions that the CI program and its staff members do not engage in any political activity. And they conduct only academic activities for and in the interests of their host institutions and US Chinese-language learners.

The University of Missouri System President Mun Choi clarified during a news conference after the public session of the UM Board of Curators meeting in 2019, an audit of the Confucius Institute at the university earlier that year "found that they were living up to their mission, found no issues of barriers to academic freedom — which was one of the concerns raised by the senator — or any evidence of academic espionage."

"Our approach with this program as well as any other program that we operate or partner with is to trust but verify," Choi said. Regretfully, the university closed its Confucius Institute in 2020 under increased political pressures, including restrictions to UM's eligibility to receive some federal funding.

Robert Farley, an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce of the University of Kentucky, emphasized on his several interactions with the CI programs at the UK in his recent column for the Diplomat, and argued that "the idea that Confucius Institutes offer a particularly virulent vector for spreading Chinese propaganda is based on a complete misunderstanding of how undergraduate education works, and is largely nonsense."

He further added that "there are real costs to closing a Confucius Institute that ought to be weighed carefully by university administrations".

The CI programs and their staff members are apolitical, and they should not be subject to FARA. As an old saying goes, "the gentleman is easy of mind, while the small man is always full of anxiety". Hopefully those politicians can abandon their ideological prejudice and view the CI programs in a proper and fair way. Leave these educational programs to the universities.