Confucius Institutes were Chinese-government-funded centers for Chinese language and culture instruction hosted on U.S. university campuses, typically staffed and partly funded through Hanban, the Chinese Ministry of Education’s Office of Chinese Language Council International. Between roughly 2019 and 2023, the vast majority of U.S. Confucius Institutes closed. A federal watchdog review of that wave, and separate independent reporting on what replaced some of the closed institutes, together raise a compliance question that outlasts the closures themselves: how does a research administration office keep monitoring foreign-influence risk once the entity that made it visible has technically disappeared?
This guide summarizes what a 2023 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) review actually found about the closure wave, distinguishes that from separate, non-GAO reporting on institute rebranding, and lays out what both mean for ongoing foreign-influence compliance monitoring at a research institution. It assumes familiarity with Section 117 foreign-gift and contract reporting and general research security obligations — this page is scoped specifically to the Confucius Institute closure/replacement pattern, not a general foreign-influence compliance primer.
What actually happened: the closure wave, 2019–2023
At their peak, roughly 100 Confucius Institutes operated at U.S. colleges and universities. That number collapsed to fewer than five by the time GAO published its review in October 2023, in the report China: With Nearly All U.S. Confucius Institutes Closed, Some Schools Sought Alternative Language Support (GAO-24-105981).
GAO surveyed schools that had hosted a Confucius Institute and asked what drove the closure decision. The dominant factor was federal funding risk, not an independent judgment about the institutes’ academic value: more than 60% of the 74 responding schools said the potential loss of, or ineligibility for, federal funding contributed “to a great extent” to their decision to close. That risk traces to two specific statutory restrictions:
- Section 1286 of the FY2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which barred Department of Defense Chinese-language-program funding (including Title VI-adjacent flagship language programs) to institutions that hosted a Confucius Institute, unless the institution obtained a waiver.
- The FY2021 NDAA, which tightened related restrictions further, reinforcing the funding-eligibility conflict schools faced between hosting an institute and remaining eligible for DoD-funded language and research programs.
In effect, Congress made hosting a Confucius Institute financially incompatible with a range of federal funding relationships, and universities responded largely on those terms — a funding-eligibility decision more than a research-security determination made by the institutions themselves.
What GAO found about what replaced the institutes
GAO’s survey also asked the 74 responding schools what they did instead to maintain Chinese-language instruction. The reported alternative-support arrangements were not uniform:
- Academic-department instruction — 43 respondents shifted Chinese-language teaching into a standard academic department (e.g., a language or East Asian studies department), outside any Chinese-government-affiliated structure.
- U.S. government-sponsored language programs — 16 respondents drew on existing federal language-education programs.
- Taiwanese-entity support — 12 respondents received assistance, including scholarships, from Taiwanese government-affiliated organizations, an explicitly distinct funding source from mainland Chinese sponsors.
- Continued assistance from the original Chinese partner institution — 9 respondents reported that the same Chinese partner university or organization that had backed their Confucius Institute continued providing some form of support after the institute’s formal closure.
That last category is the one most directly relevant to ongoing compliance monitoring: GAO’s own data shows that closing a Confucius Institute did not necessarily end a school’s relationship with its original Chinese government-linked sponsor. In roughly one in eight cases among survey respondents, some form of that relationship persisted under a different institutional label.
The rebranding question: what’s GAO’s finding and what isn’t
Separately from GAO’s report, independent research and advocacy organizations — most visibly the National Association of Scholars (NAS), in reporting and a report titled After Confucius Institutes — have documented that Hanban itself was restructured: it was renamed the Center for Language Education and Cooperation (CLEC), operating under China’s Ministry of Education, with a nominally separate, non-governmental entity, the Chinese International Education Foundation (CIEF), now handling funding and program support for Confucius Institutes and many of their successor programs.
It matters for compliance purposes to be precise about sourcing here. GAO-24-105981 documents the closure wave, its funding-driven cause, and the categories of alternative language support schools pursued — including that some schools kept working with their original Chinese partner institution. GAO’s report does not itself name or analyze CLEC or CIEF. The CLEC/CIEF rebranding narrative is separate, non-governmental reporting, not a GAO finding, and a compliance office citing this pattern internally should attribute each claim to its actual source rather than treating all of it as GAO’s conclusion. Both strands point toward the same practical concern — that an institution’s foreign-government-affiliated language-and-cultural-exchange relationship can survive the closure of the entity that made it visible under Section 117 and NDAA reporting — but they are not the same document, and a research-compliance office should not overstate GAO’s role in the rebranding claim specifically.
What this means for foreign-influence compliance monitoring
For a research administration or compliance office, the practical implication isn’t about Confucius Institutes as such — most are already closed — but about the durability of foreign-sponsor relationships once a formally named entity is gone. A few concrete monitoring implications follow directly from GAO’s own data:
1. A closed institute doesn’t close the relationship by default
Where a former Confucius Institute’s academic activities moved into a standard department, treat any continuing funding, staffing, curriculum material, or in-kind support connected to the original Chinese partner institution as a foreign relationship requiring the same disclosure scrutiny it would have received while the institute still carried that name. The organizational label changing does not, on its own, change whether Section 117 gift-and-contract-reporting thresholds or institutional conflict-of-interest disclosure obligations apply.
2. Ask what happened to the assets, not just the entity
When reviewing a formerly-Confucius-Institute-affiliated program, compliance offices should trace what happened to four things specifically: funding source, teaching staff (were visiting teachers previously affiliated with Hanban/CLEC/CIEF retained?), curriculum materials, and any MOU or partnership agreement with the original Chinese university or organization. A rename or organizational absorption into an academic department can leave some or all four unchanged.
3. Don’t rely on the institute’s absence from a list as evidence of no relationship
Institutional foreign-influence risk registers, NSPM-33-driven disclosure reviews, and Section 117 filings are often built around named entities. If the tracked entity (the Confucius Institute) no longer exists, a register that isn’t re-checked against successor arrangements can under-report a relationship that GAO’s own survey shows persisted in a measurable share of cases.
4. Distinguish genuinely severed relationships from renamed ones
Not every alternative arrangement GAO documented raises the same concern — academic-department instruction with no continuing Chinese-government funding, U.S. government-sponsored programs, and Taiwanese-entity support are each organizationally and financially distinct from the original Confucius Institute relationship. The category that warrants continued scrutiny is specifically continued involvement from the original Chinese partner institution, whatever form that support now takes.
5. Track this at the sponsored-programs and general-counsel level, not just area-studies
Because former Confucius Institute activity typically now sits inside an academic department rather than a freestanding, centrally tracked unit, it can fall outside the visibility of whichever office originally tracked the institute (often international affairs or a provost’s office). Confirm responsibility for monitoring successor arrangements is assigned somewhere, rather than assuming it lapsed along with the institute’s closure — this is the same coordination gap that broader US-China research collaboration compliance work already has to manage for research partnerships generally.
How this connects to broader foreign-influence compliance infrastructure
Confucius Institute monitoring doesn’t sit in isolation — it’s one instance of the broader foreign-gift, foreign-talent-program, and research-security compliance apparatus U.S. institutions have built out over the past several years:
- Section 117 reporting requires institutions to report foreign gifts and contracts above statutory thresholds from any foreign source, including foreign governments and government-affiliated entities — a continuing relationship with a Confucius Institute’s original Chinese sponsor, under any name, is evaluated against the same thresholds. See Section 117 Foreign Gift and Contract Reporting.
- NSPM-33-driven research security programs, which most federal funding agencies now require of institutions receiving research funding above set thresholds, cover disclosure of foreign affiliations and support more broadly than Section 117’s gift-and-contract framing. See Research Security and NSF Research Security Training Requirements.
- Export-control and restricted-entity screening is a separate, narrower concern — it governs controlled technology and named restricted entities rather than general funding relationships, but the same due-diligence habit (verify who’s actually on the other side of an agreement, not just what it’s called) applies. See Countries of Concern Under the CHIPS and Science Act and Export Control Reform and Research Security.
- DoD-specific proposal and award screening, such as DARPA’s Countering Foreign Influence Program, applies an agency-specific risk review layered on top of the government-wide NSPM-33 baseline. See DARPA Countering Foreign Influence Program (CFIP).
Frequently asked questions
Are Confucius Institutes still operating in the United States?
A small number remained open as of GAO’s October 2023 report — fewer than five, down from roughly 100 at the institutes’ peak. The overwhelming majority closed between 2019 and 2023, primarily driven by FY2019 and FY2021 NDAA restrictions that made hosting an institute incompatible with certain Department of Defense funding eligibility.
Did GAO find that universities deliberately evaded federal restrictions by renaming their Confucius Institutes?
Not in those terms. GAO’s report documents that a subset of schools (9 of 74 survey respondents) continued receiving some form of assistance from their original Chinese partner institution after formally closing the Confucius Institute, without characterizing this as evasion. The more pointed rebranding narrative — that Hanban restructured into CLEC/CIEF specifically to help institutes and successor programs continue under different names — comes from separate, non-GAO reporting, most visibly the National Association of Scholars. Compliance offices should keep these two sources distinct when documenting internal risk assessments.
What should a compliance office actually check for a formerly-Confucius-Institute-affiliated program?
At minimum: current funding source for any successor Chinese-language or cultural programming, whether previously affiliated visiting teachers or staff remain involved, whether any MOU or partnership agreement with the original Chinese partner institution is still active in any form, and whether existing Section 117 and research-security disclosure processes have been updated to capture the successor arrangement rather than still tracking only the closed institute by name.
Does closing a Confucius Institute end an institution’s Section 117 reporting obligation related to that relationship?
Not automatically. Section 117 reporting thresholds apply to foreign gifts and contracts based on the source and value of the transaction, not on whether a specific named program still exists. A continuing relationship with the same foreign sponsor — under a new program name, or channeled through an academic department — remains reportable on the same terms if it meets the statutory thresholds.
Sources
U.S. Government Accountability Office, China: With Nearly All U.S. Confucius Institutes Closed, Some Schools Sought Alternative Language Support, GAO-24-105981 (October 2023). National Association of Scholars, After Confucius Institutes, and related NAS reporting on CLEC/CIEF (cited above as non-GAO, independent reporting — verify current details directly against NAS’s published report before relying on specific institution counts, which this guide does not repeat unverified).
