TLDR: Worked at and continue to work closely with the organization cited in this article and from what I can see, while not without its issues, the Confucius Institute is one form of soft power propaganda I can understand and get behind.
I also worked, in part, at a confucius institute and china business center on campus as an intern then as an administrator later on. Now work very closely with them from my current position elsewhere. All I have to say is... of course it's propaganda. However it's very soft propaganda. At no point in my dealing have they ever pushed party ideology. If there is any malicious party member with an ulterior motive sitting in china rubbing their hands together, the worst thought they could have is "let's use the CI to gradually introduce the western world to Chinese culture so they'll be more accepting of us 70 years from now when we've finally conquered them economically."
And yes the amount of money cited here is ludicrously low and I would know because I wrote our budget and handled the actual transfers... Which were a huge pain in the dick as with every financial dealing I've had with China. Hanban (the funding organization in China) pays for flights lodging and banquets for the administrators delegation trip (which this article is speaking of) and pays for thousands of kids lodgings and food from high schools that have one of their teachers teaching mandarin.
We are talking millions and millions of dollars. What do they get for it? They get to expose thousands of potential future consumers, investors, policy makers etc, to an idea of Chinese history and culture that is not what you see on Fox News. A far more romantic idea. At western Kentucky university they have managed to push through dozens if not hundreds of Chinese teachers and reach over 10,000 students throughout the state. (According to some information I read somewhere I can't be bothered to cite and make no promises to it's accuracy).
This, in my mind is no different than the romantic idea that America is a liberator and the land of the free as opposed to some tyrannical and economically repressive force throughout the rest of the world...
So which is the truth? The answer is both. China, just like America has its bad sides. Horrendous human rights violations and heavy handed politics are just a few of the most visible ones but that doesn't mean the country isn't beautiful with an amazing, rich history and a lot of fantastic qualities.
All of us here have some dealing with China or another as its a pretty small sub but almost every thread has at least a few bitter cynics. And they are of course entitled to their feelings. There's a lot of shit wrong with that country and if you sat neck deep in its shit for years in some shitty teaching position that frequently failed to pay you, in some shitty city I can hardly blame you. But while the party does a lot of wrong I don't think everything it does is wrong.
One of the schools I used to work with was extremely fucking poor. Like 60% were on free lunches and a lot of these students took mandarin. These kids through some pretty intense fundraising got a chance to go to china and only needed to pay for a plane ticket. These are kids that would otherwise never leave there drug infested town let alone have a chance to see a different continent almost fully paid for.
Some of these kids might get a larger scope of the world, a different perspective of culture and life and realize there's a world outside the awful reality they are surrounded with. To me that makes it worth it
Should we be careful? Yes. The U.S. Government is terrified of China and for good reason in many cases due to the espionage that occurs. The import export protocols are a nightmare unless you've got some serious lawyers backing you and even then if you fucking up they come down on you hardddd. United Technologies was fined some obscene amount of money well into 7 or 8 figures for fucking up on this.
But as far as I can tell the confucius education is a soft power tactic and one engaged by almost every country around the world. It's far from perfect but from what I can see its main focus is education, giving opportunities to see a much larger world and exposing people to a different way of life...and I think that's a worthy cause to funnel some of their money into.