Washington, June 29 (TIWN): China's cultural promotion centre Confucius Institutes, which was accused of being a propaganda arm for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is being rebranded and reopened in the United States, a media report said. As many as 104 out of the total 118 Confucius Institutes were closed last week in the US and four more are in the process of shutting down, the Voice of America (VOA) reported citing National Association of Scholars' report.

Of these, at least 28 have replaced their Confucius Institute with a similar program, and at least 58 have maintained close relationships with their former Confucius Institute partner, the VOA citing the report. Perry Link, professor of Chinese language studies at the University of California Riverside, told VOA Mandarin that he was surprised first by how many Confucius Institutes have been shut down in the US.

"I didn't expect the rate of closures to be so high. Second, they still exist in another way with another name. I think this is expected. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon," he said. Confucius Institutes are public educational partnerships between colleges and universities in China and colleges and universities in other countries.