Xinning Song, director of the Confucius Institute at the VUB university in Brussels, is banned from entry into the Schengen space for 8 years. Local press reports claim that Song “acted as a recruiter for the Chinese intelligence services and sought informants among Chinese students [in Belgium].” Confucius Institutes are language and culture centers run by the People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of Education, which are hosted in more than 500 universities around the world. Critics have raised concerns about incidents of infringement upon intellectual freedom at some Confucius Institutes, whose terms of agreement are often hidden. A former head of propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party has called them “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.”