Cesar Hildebrandt, director of the weekly *Hildebrandt en sus 13*, and Mirko Lauer, a columnist for the newspaper *La Republica*, criticized an article by Navarro in which he attempts to discredit the institute—an organization that has successfully taught the Chinese language at four major Peruvian universities.

  Navarro claimed that U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had labeled the Confucius Institute a threat to U.S. national security, adding that it now poses a danger to Peru—a country for which China is the primary trading partner and one of its largest investors.

  Hildebrandt referred to Navarro as an “emissary of Donald Trump,” noting that the ambassador has declared that his own country will not engage in academic collaboration with these Chinese-affiliated centers.

  For his part, Lauer—writing in *La Republica*, that newspaper that published Navarro’s piece—penned a column titled “Spitting in the Soup at Torre Tagle” (a reference to the headquarters of the Peruvian Foreign Ministry), alluding to Navarro’s persistent interference in Peru’s internal affairs.

  Lauer pointed out that the ambassador “is hell-bent on forcing the closure of the four Confucius Institutes, even though that is not his role,” adding that the universities in question are among the most academically prestigious in the country and rank among the most prominent in all of Latin America.

  He added that what Navarro has done with the published text amounts to “offending four prominent Peruvian universities and spoiling things for Torre Tagle and the Chinese Embassy in Peru,” on the eve of the 55th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Peru and China.

jdt/las/mrs