The Singapore Confucius Institute is a tie-up between China’s Centre for Language Education and Cooperation, an organisation affiliated with the Chinese education ministry formerly known as Hanban that runs the CIs, and the city state’s Nanyang Technological University. It is among the hundreds of CIs around the world that have in recent months faced growing scrutiny, following assertions by US President Donald Trump that they are part of Beijing’s propaganda and influence operations. In the first half of 2020, the ASEAN region overtook the European Union as the mainland’s top trading partner, in part due to the US-China trade war, which forced Beijing to rethink its global supply chain. This also explained why most ASEAN nations had set up CIs, suggested Irene Chan, an Associate Research Fellow at the RSIS. “China’s rise depends on securing its dominance over the smaller states at its doorstep,” Chan said, arguing that as facilitators of cultural exchange, the institutes had a strong role in promoting trade cooperation between China and countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, referring to China’s ambitious plan to boost trade and connectivity in the region. Dr Benjamin Ho, an Assistant Professor of the China programme at the RSIS said that while the Trump administration’s attack on CIs might have bruised their reputation in the West, that was probably not the case in Southeast Asia.