Foreign mission edition

The State Department has designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center a “foreign mission” of China, the latest salvo in the ongoing confrontation between Washington and Beijing.

I spoke with the directors of several campus Confucius Institutes following Thursday’s announcement, and while they still were looking into the foreign-mission designation, all said they did not think it would affect their operations. Gao Qing, executive director of the Confucius Institute U.S. Center, told Elizabeth Redden of Inside Higher Ed that the administrative office already provides the U.S. government with much of what would be required to report as a foreign mission, which includes information about personnel, real-estate holdings, funding, and other operations.

“I think it is largely symbolic,” Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told me. He called the designation a “relatively effortless and cost-free way” for the government to keep up pressure on China.

Daly said the CI U.S. Center meets the requirements of a foreign mission under American law — it’s owned and controlled by a foreign government. “Foreign mission” is a technical definition and doesn’t necessarily imply bad intent. In his remarks, however, Stilwell called Confucius Institutes part of China’s “global propaganda and malign influence campaign.”

(At a press briefing, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said the State Department’s action was “demonizing and stigmatizing the normal operation of a cooperation project between China and the U.S.”)

The Chinese government started the language centers as part of its effort at soft-power diplomacy, a way to show a different face of China to the world. But as a tool, they’ve become increasingly less effective. Bowing to pressure from campus critics and elected officials, 40 have closed in recent years, and there are now just 65 on American campuses.

Universities in Germany, India, Sweden, and elsewhere have also shut the centers down. It’s hard to imagine, given the state of Sino-American relations, a college signing an agreement to open a Confucius Institute today. 

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Later this week, Joe Biden will officially accept the Democratic nomination for president. What would a Biden administration mean for international education? Based on public statements and policy positions posted on his campaign website, here’s some of what we might expect of a Biden presidency:

A doctoral student at George Washington University was detained by authorities at his home in Belarus.

Saudi Arabia, the fourth largest source of international students in the U.S., said it would permit its students on government scholarships overseas to study online for the fall semester.

The resumption of U.S. visa services in India and the prioritizing of student-visa applicants is an important development, but it may be too late for students seeking to come for the fall.

Controversy erupted in Britain after an algorithm developed to award student scores on a nationwide exam used in university admissions gave many students marks lower than teachers had predicted.

A State Department cable obtained by ProPublica predicts an 82 percent drop in nonimmigrant visas — a category that includes student, as well as business and tourist, visas — in 2021.

An update to student-visa guidance says that if colleges submitted a procedural change plan in the spring and they haven’t substantively changed operations for fall, they don’t need to submit a new plan.

The Asia-Pacific Association for International Education has postponed its March 2021 conference until 2022.

Last week I asked for pandemic reading and viewing recommendations. Megan Murray, an international student adviser at Babson College suggested Good Trouble, a documentary about the late congressman and Civil Rights pioneer John Lewis. “Certainly has some wisdom for us in these days where long-game courage as advocates is crucial,” she wrote. 

Please keep the recommendations coming! Meanwhile, I was thrilled to see a new essay in the New Yorker from Peter Hessler, one of my favorite writers on China. The piece is nominally about how China has handled the coronavirus, but Hessler, who first came to China to teach through the Peace Corps, is now a writing instructor at Sichuan University, and I found it chiefly interesting for his observations about today’s Chinese students.