Recently obtained emails shine a light on CCP–backed influence efforts in Washington State.
Recently obtained emails shine a light on CCP–backed influence efforts in Washington State.
L ast November, students from the choir of Lincoln High School, in Tacoma, Wash., performed a concert for Peng Liyuan, the wife of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco. While Peng didn’t appear in person for the performance, which celebrated her birthday, it was recorded for her and Xi, and it kicked off an exchange of new year’s greetings last month.
After the concert, China’s state media organs whipped into action to promote narratives about the school, and not for the first time. Xi had visited Lincoln High in 2015, during his trip to Washington State. The following year, the school’s principal said that a woman from China had even applied to work there, calling Lincoln “the most famous high school in the world.”
As innocuous as it may sound to some, the relationship between this school, Lincoln High School, and Chinese government entities is part of a broader propaganda and influence effort by numerous Chinese state organs and groups affiliated with Beijing.
Emails recently obtained by Parents Defending Education and shared with National Review provide a window into the tangle of Chinese state entities that work on gaining inroads with U.S. school districts.
Chinese government actors are intensifying their efforts to use their influence in U.S. education to cast Beijing’s aims as fundamentally benign, the emails suggest. “Xi’s goal is clear. He wants to mold a generation of Americans who are amenable to his political aims. Tacoma is knowingly and actively allowing that to happen,” said Alex Nester, investigative fellow for Parents Defending Education.
“Let’s make one thing clear: Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party are not our friends.”
But that’s a message falling upon deaf ears in Washington State.
Beijing carries out its education influence strategy in part via Confucius Institutes — Chinese government-funded language and cultural centers that work with universities and K–12 institutions. They are funded by the Office of Chinese Language Council International, also called Hanban. In a 2020 decision to label the Confucius Institute Center U.S. a Chinese “foreign mission,” the State Department said that Hanban is affiliated with China’s education ministry.
Many Confucius Institutes have disappeared over the past five years, owing to heightened skepticism of China’s aims and federal legislation that prompted universities to cut ties or else be cut off from federal funds.
But in Washington State, a Confucius Institute program operated by five U.S. and Chinese educational institutions is evidently continuing to operate amid growing concern about China’s aims.
“This initiative isn’t surprising; it’s more common than many people realize,” said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “It is part and parcel with China’s broader subnational diplomacy, which emphasizes people-to-people ties, albeit on the CCP’s terms and conducted under the CCP’s watchful eye.”
Parents Defending Education obtained an email from Anping Liu, a professor at Chongqing’s Jiaotong University, who was appointed last year to be co-director of the Confucius Institute of Washington State (CIWA). He is also a visiting scholar at Pacific Lutheran University, which hosts CIWA, according to the organization’s website. His biography there says that he previously served as a co-director of a Confucius Institute at Abomey Calavi University in Benin from 2014 to 2016.
In October, Liu wrote to Karl Hoseth, Lincoln High School’s principal, and Patrick Erwin, the school’s former principal who now works for Tacoma School District, to gauge their interest in reviving educational exchanges that began in 2017 with a secondary “sister” school in Chongqing, YuCai Middle School.
“Unfortunately the exchanges have been suspended because of the Covid-19,” he wrote. “Now the school authorities of YuCai Middle School are wondering whether they can be honored to connect with you again and resume the collaborations and exchanges?”
The answer from Hoseth and Erwin was a resounding yes. Responding to Liu, Erwin, who now serves as the Global Education office for Tacoma Schools, called Yucai “a special place.”
After Xi’s trip to Lincoln, students traveled to China several times, visiting Yucai Middle School in 2017 and 2019, before, as Liu noted, it fizzled out during the pandemic. In a subsequent email, the Chinese school’s principal, Sarah Xia, noted that the partnership originated when a teacher from her school participated in a “Confucius Institute Volunteer about Chinese Language Teacher Program” in Washington State.
Liu also invited Lincoln High School to take part in a “‘Chinese Bridge’ Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign Secondary School Students” and cultural activities with other Washington State schools — suggesting that Tacoma is not the only school district to which Liu reached out.
While Liu used an email address affiliated with Seattle Public Schools to contact Erwin and Hoseth, a spokeswoman for SPS clarified that Liu is not one of their employees “but does have a SPS email to assist his collaboration with our school district.”
The spokeswoman also said that Liu’s work “is on behalf of CIWA K–12 and focuses on all schools (not just SPS schools) that have CIWA partnerships, so that would include Lincoln High School in Tacoma.”
Paul Manfredi, a professor of Chinese at PLU and director of CIWA, elaborated on the institute’s mission in an emailed statement to NR. “CIWA (Confucius Institute of the State of Washington) was established in 2010, and has enjoyed a long and successful record of facilitating and promoting Chinese language and culture education in Washington state,” he said.
“Originally located at the University of Washington, Seattle, since 2020 CIWA has been housed at Pacific Lutheran University. Our programs are fully independent, and entirely directed, in consultation with our partners in China—Sichuan University (for higher education), and Chongqing Jiaotong University (for K-12 programs), by CIWA.”
A FAQ page on the CIWA’s website at PLU says that control over its funding is exercised by “U.S.-based scholars,” that CIWA is not a mission of a foreign government or political party, and that “this includes some financial and staff support from China.”
It’s not immediately clear from the page what portion of its funding comes from Chinese-government entities, and Manfredi did not provide further details about this.
Other players in Lincoln High School’s ties to China are far less transparent, though. “Much of China’s sub-national diplomacy flies under the radar — local and state officials aren’t exactly forthcoming, making it difficult to track without mandatory disclosure,” Singleton said.
Much of the Chinese state media coverage of Lincoln High School refers to a group called the U.S.–China Youth and Student Exchange Association. That organization and its president, a man named David Chong, feature prominently in the China Daily’s coverage of the November recital.
The group has also organized letters addressed to Xi, on behalf of “friendly personages from all walks of life in the U.S. state of Washington,” as China’s Xinhua news outlet put it in a report about one such initiative last August.
What’s more, it’s still not exactly clear who invited Lincoln High School to perform for Peng and Xi last November, and PDE’s request for records did not turn up any answers. However, a report about the performance by the Chinese propaganda outlet CGTN states that it was organized by the U.S.–China Youth and Student Exchange Association, China Media Group, and “several other organizations.” China Media Group is a subsidiary of the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department.
The November 16 concert event was called “China-U.S. Friendly Dialogue on People-to-people exchanges,” per CGTN. It’s also not clear who invited Hoseth to a reception where he met Xi, according to one of the emails.
He told Liu on November 17: “I just returned from San Francisco where I had the good fortune to meet President Xi and shake his hand prior to the dinner banquet in his honor last night.”
Nester had tough words for Tacoma Public Schools’ stewardship of the district’s connections to the Chinese government.
“It’s disgusting to see Tacoma leaders cozy up to China in the face of long-standing allegations of genocide and human-rights abuses. It’s a slap in the face to the thousands of Chinese Americans who fled communist dictatorship for freedom in America. Our leaders need to step up to protect our students — and our country,” she said.
Erwin, Hoseth, and Tacoma Public Schools did not respond to National Review’s requests for comment.