Commentary
The Chinese communist regime is expanding its influence in American K–12 schools through partnerships, subsidized trips to China, surviving Confucius Classrooms, and exchange networks targeting younger students.
On Aug. 13, 2020, then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center as a “foreign mission” of the People’s Republic of China under the Foreign Missions Act.
The fiscal year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act went further, cutting off Department of War funding for universities that hosted Chinese state-funded Confucius Institutes unless they received a waiver.
These measures effectively ended the program in the United States, reducing the number of institutes from 118 at their peak in 2017 to fewer than five by 2023. Beijing has since developed several new and overlapping channels for reaching American high school students, including surviving Confucius Classrooms, individual school-to-school partnerships, and a heavily subsidized national exchange program. One of the newest examples is now underway in Chicago.
On Dec. 1, 2025, Taft High School signed a school cooperation memorandum of understanding with Shandong Jinan No. 9 High School inside the Chinese Consulate in Chicago. Taft is now recruiting roughly 20 students for a trip to China in 2027. The school’s own alumni newsletter frames the partnership as consistent with Taft’s International Baccalaureate mission to “educate global citizens.”
Jinan No. 9’s 2025–2026 first semester work plan, published on its official website, states that the school is guided by “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” and the principles of the 20th Party Congress. Its first major section, placed ahead of teaching quality, is titled “Strengthen Party Leadership and Guide the School’s High-Quality Development.”
The plan directs the school to use Xuexi Qiangguo, the political study platform of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to organize online and in-person learning activities. It also calls for developing a provincial-level “Party-building brand,” expanding ideological and political education, and building a team of ideological and political instructors.
The final section orders the creation of a schoolwide network of “publicity information officers” to increase positive media coverage and expand the school’s official social media following. This is the political and educational environment into which Taft plans to send American high school students.
Taft is not the only Chicago-area school involved. Chinese-language reports identify additional partnerships involving Sidney Sawyer Elementary, Jones College Prep, Evanston Township High School, Barrington Middle School Station, and Intercultural Montessori. China Daily reported that nine pairs of schools signed memoranda of understanding at the same December event.
These new school-to-school partnerships are emerging against the backdrop of the CCP’s long-standing involvement in American K–12 education through Confucius Classrooms. The National Association of Scholars estimated that at the program’s peak, more than 500 Confucius Classrooms operated nationwide, about four times the number of university-level Confucius Institutes.
Unlike their university-level counterparts, Confucius Classrooms largely survived because the federal crackdown targeted universities rather than K–12 districts. In a 2023 report, Parents Defending Education (PDE) identified 143 U.S. school districts still running Confucius Classroom-style programs, including 20 near active military bases.
The surviving Confucius Classroom network is not the only channel through which Beijing is reaching American students. PDE followed its 2023 report with an investigation of the Young Envoys Scholarship (YES) program, documenting 83 universities and 27 K–12 schools across 30 states participating in YES. It described the program as part of “a global soft power campaign … designed to advance the People’s Republic of China’s … political and cultural agenda” and “intentionally aimed at American students … to influence how youth in the United States view China.”
YES is administered by the China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE). According to its entry on Baidu Baike, a Chinese state-linked encyclopedia, CEAIE is “guided by Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the important thought of the Three Represents, the Scientific Outlook on Development, and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” It must also “always uphold the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party” and “integrate the work of the Chinese Communist Party into the association’s entire operation and development process.”
The House Select Committee on the CCP found that CEAIE was among organizations “publicly identified by U.S. intelligence agencies as CCP front groups tasked with advancing Beijing’s United Front work.”
United front work is the Party’s term for an international influence operation aimed at neutralizing opposition to CCP policy.
PDE documented several examples beyond Taft High School in Chicago.
Iowa’s Muscatine High School accepted a trip fully funded by Beijing after Chinese leader Xi Jinping personally invited a student he called his “friend.” Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) called the trip “a national security concern … a reminder of the CCP’s widespread influence across the U.S.”
PDE also identified Chicago’s Walter Payton College Preparatory High School as a YES participant whose delegation traveled to China in June and July 2025.
The program’s engagement with American students does not end when they return home. The YES Friends Club maintains contact with former participants through contests and events. At its launch last year, Consul General Wang Baodong said nearly 5,000 teenagers from the Chicago consular district had traveled to China under Xi’s initiative to bring “50,000 young Americans to China for exchange and study” over five years.
The event also unveiled “East Meets West: 100 American Secondary School Students’ Tales About China,” featuring essays by YES participants.
The concerns that led Washington to dismantle the university-level Confucius Institute network now apply to programs expanding in American K–12 schools. Former FBI Director Christopher Wray described the CCP’s strategy as a whole-of-society campaign, while members of Congress called the institutes a national security threat and a platform for Chinese intelligence collection and political influence.
Yet the federal response targeted universities while leaving public schools without comparable safeguards. Beijing’s influence campaign did not end; it shifted to school partnerships, subsidized exchanges, and permanent networks aimed at a younger audience.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
