The US Department of Defense has designated Confucius Institutes, Chinese-funded cultural centers on American university campuses, a threat to US national security, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday.
Washington considers the centers to be propaganda tools of the Chinese Communist Party, and has taken steps to shut them down.
Hegseth said the Defense Department took action after such organizations had reappeared in disguised forms.
US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth is pictured during a roundtable in the East Room of the White House in Washington, US, on Wednesday.
Photo: Bloomberg
"We added these sleeper organizations to our list of institutions that threaten our national security," Hegseth said in a video.
"It turns out that 80 new propaganda cells across 30 universities had popped up using different names and different charters, but with the same mission: to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students," he continued.
Hegseth said the Department of Defense had dismantled all the centers within the last two months.