LOS ANGELES TIMES -- After difficult discussions, San Francisco State chose to keep its federally funded program, called Chinese Flagship, which serves about 30 students each year with a $475,000 Defense Department grant for intensive language instruction, cultural training and opportunities for study and internships in China.
San Francisco State officials said they chose the Flagship program over the Confucius Institute because it offered more advanced training for their students — but expressed frustration that they could not keep both.
“Closing the Confucius Institute is the wrong thing to do,” said Yenbo Wu, associate vice president of the international education division. “Keeping Flagship is the right thing to do. Unfortunately, we can’t do both and not because we did anything wrong. It’s because of outside policy pressures we have no control over.”