They are also there to provide a base for keeping an eye on Chinese students in the USA to make sure they don’t stray.
They even hunt them down and beat them.
The Biden people really showed whose side they were on when they revoked Trump’s order on disclosure.
One would think “Why would they be worried about disclosing that relationship?”
Why indeed.
The U.S.? Not so much.
My office mate at the university where I worked was from the Peoples’ Republic of China. I noticed one day that he was online with the Confucius Institute. He traveled easily back to China over vacation periods. On a regular basis he was on the phone with someone for long periods of time during which he only spoke Chinese. He also hacked the university’s mainframe within weeks of being hired. I wish I could have monitored his computer usage when he left work in the evening but continued to access our office computer remotely. What was he doing those evenings? Spying via computer?