Chris Lange, FISM News
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While the Chinese Communist Party has been busy gobbling up American farmland and flying spy balloons over U.S. military sites with impunity, it has also been quietly spreading its growing tentacles into classrooms across the country.
A recent Parents Defending Education report revealed that Beijing has been wildly successful in its efforts to program young American minds to embrace Chinese Communist Party propaganda through “Confucius Classrooms.”
Confucius Classrooms have popped up in 143 K-12 school districts across 34 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. , and 20 of those schools are located near military bases.
Beijing has invested more than $17 million into Confucius Classrooms, which are promoted as a means of introducing American kids to Chinese language, art, and culture. The report, however, suggests something far more insidious.
“While the United States is not officially part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese state media has touted the work done by Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms to further the Chinese Communist Party’s global influence,” the report reads.
The way it works is through partnerships between the U.S. K-12 schools and universities and a CCP entity. This is accomplished through grants, sister school partnerships, and other programs.
According to the report, three of the “top science and technology high schools” in the U.S. have ties to Chinese government-affiliated programs. They include Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Kentucky’s Simpson County Public Schools, and North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology received more than $1 million in financial aid from Chinese government-affiliated entities over the span of a decade. A March 2023 report by Parents Defending Education indicated that the Thomas Jefferson Partnership Fund (TJPF) received at least $250,000 in donations from the nonprofit Ameson Education and Cultural Exchange Foundation in fiscal year 2015 and 2016 and between $100,000 and $500,000 in fiscal year 2018, according to documents obtained by the group.
The New York Post reported that Ameson founder and Executive Vice Charman Sean Zhang has ties to Beijing’s United Front Work Department. The article noted that a 2018 U.S.-China Economic and Securities Review Commission report said that the United Front Work Department was established to “co-opt and neutralize” opposition to the CCP.
Meanwhile, Simpson County Public Schools in Kentucky partnered with North China Electric Power University to establish the Confucius Institute at Western Kentucky University, while North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics patted itself on the back for being named “Confucius Classroom of the Year” in 2017.
REPUBLICANS DEMAND ACTION FROM THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION
Florida Republican Rep. Mike Waltz recently told The Daily Mail that the CCP isn’t just targeting America’s public schools.
“Not only is the CCP trying to promote their propaganda through education programs but are using Chinese shell companies to outright buy American private schools around the country,” Waltz stated.
Following the release of “Little Red Classrooms,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) demanded that U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona act with “urgency,” to terminate these “disturbing partnerships” in a letter obtained by the outlet.
Banks, who sits on the newly minted House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, pointed out in the letter that, during the Trump administration, the State Department designated Confucius Institutes as a “foreign mission,” which helped shut down some of these “dangerous programs.” Since then, several of the contracts expired. However, at least seven contracts remain active in Kentucky, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.