The House advanced a measure Wednesday to restrict federal funding to schools that host Confucius Institutes, Chinese-funded education centers across college campuses nationwide. 

The Confucius Institute is a program that teaches U.S. students about Chinese language and culture. The program is funded by China and has been running for over two decades in the U.S.

At its height, it had nearly 120 centers across U.S. universities and hundreds of locations in elementary, middle and high schools.  However, since Congress took action against the institutes in 2018, most of the locations have been shuttered. 

As of March 2023, the National Association of Scholars counted a total of 13 Confucius Institutes in the U.S. - with over 108 closing or in the process of closing. 

Hammering a final nail in the proverbial coffin for the Confucius Institute, Congress passed a measure to strip Department of Homeland Security funding to the schools that still have operating centers. 

The House voted on bipartisan lines 266 - 153 to further strip federal funding from U.S. schools hosting the Confucius Institutes. 

'We are basically restricting any university that still has a Confucius Institute or an entity of concern within the Chinese Communist Party,' the bill's author, Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, told Daily Mail in an exclusive interview. 

'Look, the money is coming from the CCP. It's going directly to the university. There are strings attached. It's not just plain and simple educational purposes,' Pfluger said.

He, and many other lawmakers, claim that the group is a propaganda front for the CCP. The Texan also shared the institutes have been a way for the CCP to carry out corporate and educational espionage.

'The Chinese Communist Party has passed previous laws for intelligence gathering, for surveillance reasons, for any number of activities we want to stop.'

'Universities shouldn't be dealing with the CCP. We should have academic freedom here that is free and clear of the Chinese Communist Party,' he reasoned. 

There were 10 universities still hosting active Confucius Institutes in 2023, according to a report from the National Association of Scholars (NAS). 

At the time, Stanford University, Webster University, Pacific Luthern University and more were home to the China-backed centers.

The report also found that 111 Confucius Institutes were closed between 2019 and 2023. 

Pfluger's bill also would defund any remaining entities tied to China's 1,000 Talents Program (TTP), which sought to recruit highly talented engineers, technologists scientists and to work for China. 

A 2022 report found that the TTP successfully recruited over 150 scientists from one of America's top federal research labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the U.S. nuclear arsenal was first developed. 

A Senate report from 2019 indicates that one TTP member took proprietary jet engine information before turning that knowledge over to the Chinese government. 

'TTP targets U.S.-based researchers and scientists, regardless of ethnicity or citizenship, who focus on or have access to cutting-edge research and technology,' the report stated. 

The FBI has said that the the TTP encourages trade secret theft and economic espionage. 

The program recruited scientists that later published studies on artificial intelligence, agriculture, defense and more.