They are not about Confucius. Rather, the PRC government has chosen to use the name of Confucius as a trademark of sorts for a global soft power branding project. The Institutes, most of which in the US are hosted by colleges or universities, focus on language learning, with a variety of other cultural activities: Lunar New Year parties: calligraphy; a little Peking Opera; etc. As far as I can tell - and I have been in conversation with many US academics who have CIs on their campuses (my college does not have one) - there is no systematic effort to engage with Confucian thought in any serious manner.