The US State Department has designated a Chinese government-funded Mandarin-language programme as a foreign mission, expanding the scope of Chinese organisations operating in America that Washington regards as propaganda arms of Beijing.

Confucius Institutes in the US – an organisation managed by China’s Ministry of Education, and which finances its programmes on American campuses – will need to register its personnel roster and property holdings with the State Department, a move authorised by the Foreign Missions Act of 1982 (FMA), David Stilwell, the assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said on Thursday.

“We asked them to tell us what they're doing here in the US, we're not closing it. We’re simply designating them as what they are, as foreign missions,” Stilwell said.