In the United States and Australia, the operations of the Institutes have come under greater scrutiny recently. A report in 2014 by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) urged colleges to either negotiate their relationships to ensure academic freedom or shut them down. In 2019 FBI director Christopher Wray testified to the U.S. Congress that the Institutes “offer a platform to disseminate Chinese government or Chinese Communist Party propaganda, to encourage censorship, to restrict academic freedom.”
