Soft power

China is building soft power in U.S. schools, Senate report warns

A new bipartisan report by a Senate investigative panel has found that the Chinese government has the potential to use a popular Mandarin language program it funds at hundreds of U.S. universities and K-12 schools to shape and even stifle the discussion of controversial Beijing policies.

Although the findings are cause for concern, the report did not show a pattern of egregious incidents of U.S. academic research being squashed or that campus debate had been overtly stifled on matters that China views as sensitive such as Tibet, Taiwan and the Tiananmen Square massacre. But the report did say the institutes fostered a climate where self-censorship on those topics was more likely to occur among university officials and students.

The findings of the 96-page report, released Wednesday by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, revealed that much is still unknown about the scope and intentions behind the Confucius Institutes, despite an eight-month Senate committee investigation and a parallel assessment by the Government Accountability Office. Since 2006, China has spent $158 million to build and maintain a network of Confucius Institutes in the United States.