Biden Didn’t Revoke Trump’s CCP Anti-Propaganda Program
The Claim
The Biden administration revoked a Trump era executive order that forced schools to divulge ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
News posted on
Emerging story
In August 2020, the Trump Administration declared that the Confucius Institute, a Chinese nonprofit which offers language and cultural programs, was an arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda machine. In December, he proposed that all schools with ties to the Confucius Institute must disclose it publicly. These schools included K-12 as well as colleges.
Then, on January 26, Biden withdrew the proposal from the Office of Management and Budget (though it was never fully implemented). This has caught the attention of Biden critics, who worried this meant that Biden was allowing Chinese propaganda to enter the US school system.
Misbar’s Analysis
The proposal, which is called, “Establishing Requirement for Student and Exchange Visitor Program Certified Schools to Disclose Agreements with Confucius Institutes and Classrooms,” was not only never implemented, but it also never finished the review process. It, along with other proposals, was stopped because the regulatory process itself was frozen by the White House chief of staff, due to the administration’s desire to review existing proposals.
Ned Price, a spokesman for the US State Department, said they'd regard the Confucius Institute "as part of our overall approach of how best to respond to China’s use of information operations and other coercive and corrupting efforts to undermine and interfere in democracies.” Like its predecessor, the Biden administration seems comparably suspicious of the Confucius Institute, although less aggressive in its rhetoric. It’s clear that the new administration is going to at least consider this and other Chinese education resources as factors in diplomacy.
