When security concerns reach the classroom

Editor's note: Imran Khalid, a special commentator for CGTN, is a freelance columnist on international affairs. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth chose a social media video to deliver the verdict. Confucius Institutes, the Pentagon chief said, now sit on his department's list of institutions that threaten American national security, and some 80 programs at 30 universities linked to them had been "systematically dismantled" over the past two months.

He offered a label and no evidence. Neither he nor the Pentagon cited a single case of stolen intellectual property. What the designation actually targets are classrooms where Americans practice Chinese tones, write characters with a brush and learn how a Lunar New Year is celebrated. Calling that a security threat is not a finding. It is a smear.

Consider how these institutes came to exist. None was imposed on an American campus. Each began with a written agreement that an American university chose to sign with a Chinese partner, under the same governance that applies to any other academic collaboration. When the Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined 90 such agreements in 2019, it found that the directors at its 10 case-study schools were employees of the American university, and school officials said campus rules, curriculum included, applied to the institutes. A bipartisan Senate investigation the same year found no pattern of “egregious incidents” of research being suppressed. Since 2020, the global network has been coordinated by the Chinese International Education Foundation, a non-governmental body founded by 27 members, Peking and Fudan universities among them.

Chinese partner universities supplied teachers and teaching materials; the American host set the rules for using them. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun described these exchanges on Monday as two-way and mutually beneficial, which is an accurate account of how a language partnership works.

Now apply Washington's own standard to Washington. The State Department runs about 600 American Spaces in some 140 countries. Its American Corners sit "often in libraries or on university campuses," offering English courses, advice on applying to US colleges, films and debate clubs. In Washington's vocabulary, that is public diplomacy. The same activity travelling in the opposite direction becomes a threat designation. Culture is welcome when it leaves America and suspect when it arrives.

The approach reflects a Cold War mindset, and the policies Washington has chosen illustrate why. Section 1286 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 established a framework for identifying foreign institutions and talent programs that the US government considers a risk to national security, particularly in relation to access to US-funded research and technology. The Pentagon's fiscal 2025 list included about 130 foreign academic and research institutions, primarily in China, Russia and Iran. It was not a list of language or cultural exchange programs.

Yet the Pentagon's scrutiny has extended beyond the institutions named on the list. In August 2026, it ordered 30 US universities to review their academic, financial and research ties to foreign entities of concern, including organizations associated with rebranded Confucius Institutes. The Pentagon reported in October that the reviews had resulted in more than 80 actions to terminate partnerships. These included not only ties with listed entities but also precautionary terminations involving organizations that did not appear on the list. Such measures risk discouraging legitimate educational and cultural exchanges well beyond the partnerships directly under scrutiny.

The cost falls on ordinary Americans. Educational ties between the two countries were built by people, not by security agencies. In late December 1978, 52 Chinese scholars left Beijing for American campuses. By 2024-2025, the number of Chinese students in the United States had reached 265,919, according to Open Doors. The same data counts 1,749 Americans who studied in China for credit the year before. Chinese families have spent nearly five decades learning about America. The gap in understanding sits on the other side.

Confucius Institutes helped narrow it by bringing the language to the American students' own campus, at little cost to the university. When they closed, schools felt the loss: GAO found 43 of them turning to their own academic departments to keep Chinese teaching alive. The Modern Language Association counted 105 fewer Chinese programs at American colleges in 2021 than in 2016. Every barrier of this kind narrows the right of American universities, and of the American public, to learn about a country their economy is bound up with.

Beijing, on the other hand, has kept its own door open. At the White House on September 24, Chinese President Xi Jinping invited 100,000 young Americans to China over five years, after an earlier target of 50,000 was met ahead of schedule. One month later, the Pentagon called Chinese lessons on American campuses a threat.

Exchanges in education and culture should stay open and inclusive. Washington's part is simple: Set aside the suspicion, stop interfering in cooperation that universities chose freely, and protect the channels through which Americans and Chinese come to know each other. The young Americans who accept Xi's invitation deserve to arrive having been encouraged, not warned, by their own government.

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