The Freie Universität of Berlin signed in 2017 establishing an endowed professorship by partnering with the Chinese state body governing Confucius Institutes. The agreement sets aside approximately 500,000 euros over a five-year period to fund a teaching degree in Chinese, with provision for 20 students annually. However, language within the contract raises potentially problematic leverage on the part of the Chinese state, including allowing “corrective measures” against the university, requiring the program to obey Chinese laws that have been used to silence critics, and multiple mechanisms to halt funding, from yearly evaluations to holding any mediation in a Chinese setting. A former head of propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party has called Confucius Institutes “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up,” and multiple other contracts between Chinese state-run educational establishments and western universities have run into issues of academic freedom and censorship.