Commentary The U.S. State Department announced last August that Confucius Institutes established by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the United States after 2004 would be required to register as foreign missions. Then in October, Mike Pompeo, secretary of state at the time, said he was hopeful that all Confucius Institutes on U.S. campuses would be closed by the end of 2020. On Jan. 16 of this year, director of the American Institute in Taiwan, W. Brent Christensen, attended a Teaching Chinese as a Second Language conference in Taiwan and encouraged Taiwanese Chinese teachers to step forward and help “fill this gap” left by closed Confucius Institutes. “We have all read news stories about the closing of many of the PRC’s Confucius Centers in the U.S. Now is the time for Taiwan to step forward and help fill this gap—not only to teach Mandarin and learn English, but to more …