The United States has officially put China-backed Confucius Institutes on its list of national security threats, escalating a long-running campaign against the cultural centres on American campuses, Aljazeera reports.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the decision on Friday in a video shared on social media. He said the Pentagon had added the centres to its list of institutions that pose a danger to the country.

Washington has long accused the Chinese-funded centres, hosted at universities, of acting as tools of Beijing’s propaganda, and has previously moved to curb their operations.

According to Hegseth, the institutes did not disappear after Congress imposed restrictions. Instead, he said, they carried on under different names and charters, operating as “sleeper” outfits with the same goals as before.

“Eighty new propaganda cells across 30 universities had popped up,” he said in the video, claiming their mission was to steal intellectual property and influence American students.

Hegseth said the Pentagon had spent the past two months systematically dismantling every one of these groups.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.