Republican lawmakers this week urged the Department of Education to look to Taiwan to provide “censorship-free alternatives” for teaching Mandarin and Chinese culture on U.S. campuses, in place of Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-funded Confucius Institutes (CI). In a letter (pdf) to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) led a group of more than 20 lawmakers in calling on the department to pay attention to concerns regarding the presence of CIs at American institutions of higher education (IHE). Billed as language and culture centers, the Beijing-funded CIs have drawn intense scrutiny over their role in spreading Chinese propaganda and stifling academic expression across college campuses around the world. They’re funded and largely staffed by Hanban, a nonprofit that claims to be nongovernmental but is directly controlled by the CCP, according to a report by the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s investigations subcommittee (pdf). Steel and …