Communist Chinese Propaganda Infiltrating US Kindergarten Classrooms

American schools are already under siege from woke educators and powerful teachers unions. The last thing they need is propaganda from the Chinese government seeping into classrooms and damaging impressionable young minds. 

But according to a bombshell report by Parents Defending Education (PDE), that’s exactly what is happening.

The mission of Beijing’s infamous Confucius Institutes (CI) is well known. These “soft power” weapons were established on university campuses across the U.S. and other countries, and only recently was their true purpose recognized by many of the nation’s leaders.

CCP funding supports these outfits, which have the goal to supply teachers and schools with educational materials friendly to China’s communist regime. 

Current dictator Xi Jinping called them powerful tools to “give a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China’s message to the world.”

Over 100 were in operation on U.S. college campuses. In 2020, the U.S. State Department officially declared them to be “the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas propaganda and influence operation.” 

An insidious offshoot of the CI program is Confucius Classrooms. This reach into elementary and secondary education began in 2009 and grew to fund programs in approximately 143 schools in 34 states and Washington, D.C.

The CCP funneled more than $17 million into the K-12 offerings between 2009 and 2023. Some were in leading institutions and included 20 school districts adjacent to military bases.

According to the PDE report, at least seven schools continue to offer Confucius Classrooms or related programs.

A pair of U.S.-based groups, the College Board and Asia Society, coordinated with a Chinese Ministry of Education operation to implement the CIs in both universities and K-12 schools. 

Ominously, these programs learned their lesson from Mao’s “wisdom” gleaned from the 1960s Cultural Revolution. To obliterate a society’s values and culture, schools must first be destroyed.

The good news is that education systems have largely caught on to this communist scheme. The National Association of Scholars reported that 111 CIs have closed or are in the process of shutting down operations in the country. 

And even though there are estimated to be less than ten such programs remaining in K-12 schools, even one is too many. No amount of communist money flowing into a school system justifies the indoctrination of U.S. children into a system that would deny them the most basic freedoms.