Unlike the Confucius Institutes, whose presence in the United States has diminished amid heightened U.S. scrutiny, CSSAs have remained active.
Three prominent Republican lawmakers are urging the State Department to designate a key Chinese student group as a foreign mission, arguing the step is necessary to “protect American campuses” from covert Chinese influence.
In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the trio expressed “grave concerns” about the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) advancing Beijing’s interests across U.S. academia, an issue they described as “serious foreign policy and national security risks.”
The letter signatories are Reps. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), Brian Mast (R-Fla.), and Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), who respectively chair the House Select Committee on Chinese Communist Party, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the House Committee on Education & Workforce.
Widespread across U.S. colleges, CSSAs maintain close connections with the Chinese consulates, organizing events with Chinese officials’ support while receiving the consulates’ funding, the letter noted.
It casts CSSAs as “nominally student-led groups” that engage in “harmful and disruptive activities that chill free expression, undermine academic freedom, and raise serious national security concerns.”
The lawmakers invoked the Foreign Missions Act, passed by Congress in 1982, to address the issue, urging Rubio to formally determine whether CSSAs meet the criteria, which would subject them to disclosure requirements.
Once designated as a foreign mission, CSSA chapters must notify the State Department in advance of any meetings with local governments and universities. They would also need to seek State Department approval for public events in the United States.
The act defines a foreign mission as any entity on U.S. soil under the effective control of a foreign state. As a foreign adversary, the activities of Chinese missions require greater scrutiny, the lawmakers said.
As of 2024, 22 Chinese entities have received foreign missions designations. These include one embassy and four consulates, state media such as Xinhua News and People’s Daily, and the now-shuttered Confucius Institute U.S. Center, the de facto headquarters for the Beijing-backed network that perpetuates a sanitized view of China in the name of language teaching.
By Eva Fu
