A Florida Senator is trying to convince Miami-Dade College and Weston's Cypress Bay High School to cut ties with a controversial Chinese institute.
Marco Rubio claims the Confucius Institutes are a propaganda tool of the Chinese government. He says the program is one of China’s “foreign influence operations” against the United States.
The program operates at an array of universities and secondary schools, despite warnings from academic associations and the U.S. intelligence community.
The Republican lawmaker is also asking the Universities of South Florida, North Florida and West Florida to end their association with the programs.
“There is mounting concern about the Chinese government’s increasingly aggressive attempts to use ‘Confucius Institutes’ and other means to influence foreign academic institutions and critical analysis of China’s past history and present policies,” Rubio wrote in letters to five Florida institutions. “These institutes are overseen by a branch of the Chinese Ministry of Education, and are instructed to only teach versions of Chinese history, culture or current events that are explicitly approved by the Chinese Government and Communist Party.”