It makes sense that the Chinese government is using the Confucius Institutes for intelligence gathering and promoting Chinese government propaganda:
As Chinese cybertheft increases and the numbers of Chinese exchange students and scholars rise, officials have stepped up pressure on administrators to take more precautions to guard against espionage and efforts to steal American technologies and research data.
Opponents of the Confucius Institutes argue that such programs give Beijing a toehold in prominent American academic communities to influence attitudes and censor discussions of subjects sensitive to China, such as the Dalai Lama, Taiwan and human rights.
Robert Daly, a China scholar at the Wilson Center who previously directed the University of Maryland’s initiatives on China, dismissed as “nonsensical” the suggestion that Confucius Institutes are hotbeds of espionage. But he and many other experts agree that they are clearly instruments of the Chinese government.
“You can ask why American universities are letting the Chinese Communist Party set up soft-power agencies on their campuses,” Daly said. “A lot of university presidents believed that having a Confucius Institute will somehow curry favor with China such that they will be able to raise development dollars in some way or another. What they find is that it doesn’t create leverage for them, but leverage for the Chinese Communist Party, that if the university does something that the Chinese Communist Party disapproves of, they may withdraw Confucius Institute funding.” (……..)Scrutiny of China’s efforts on college campuses has increased on many fronts. FBI Director Christopher Wray warned universities in February not to be naive about Chinese spies in their midst and said the Confucius Institutes are on his radar. Vice President Mike Pence, in an October speech, accused Beijing of using organizations on campuses to monitor Chinese students for anti-China speech or activities.
LA Times
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