USA ( Europe Brief News): The US plans to “massively and aggressively” revoke Chinese student visas, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced, citing national security concerns.
With almost 270,000 Chinese students studying in the US last year, the decision represents a fresh setback for American universities.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated that he is targeting students who have ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Students pursuing careers in bottleneck occupations and key fields are also not exempt.
Additionally, the ministry will “intensely re-evaluate” the requirements for Chinese students interested in obtaining a visa. The new regulations will also apply to students from Hong Kong, a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China.
The United States has previously targeted international students. In order to better examine applicants’ social media accounts, the government previously directed its embassies around the world to reject fresh student visa applications.
But this is the first time a particular nationality has been singled out by the Trump administration.
Chinese students are a significant group of international students in the US, therefore that hurts American universities. Approximately 270,000 Chinese students attended American universities last year.
In contrast, only roughly 10,000 American students studied in China during the same year.
Chinese middle-class and upper-class individuals in particular send their kids to the United States. The daughter of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Xi Mingze, also attended Harvard under a false identity.
Rubio’s emphasis on “students in critical disciplines” is not surprising. Intellectual theft by Chinese workers and students in the United States has long been a source of concern for Americans.
Consider important scientific knowledge or military and technical equipment that they acquire and bring back to China.
The recent announcement has not yet received a response from China. The Chinese government did state that it “strongly opposed” the decision to temporarily suspend student applications.
“We urge you to protect the rights and interests of international students, including those from China,”
it said at the time.
For a while now, tensions between the US and China have been growing. As an illustration, consider the outrageous import taxes that the two nations levied on one another, which rose in percentage over the course of several months.
Furthermore, new limitations on the export of necessities were recently enforced by the US government. These would comprise machine tools, butane, ethane, semiconductor chemicals, and design software. In the past, China had placed rigorous restrictions on the export of geomagnets and rare earth metals.
This is not the first time the government has targeted Chinese individuals in American history. Consider the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which Chester A. Arthur, the president at the time, signed. It was the first federal statute to forbid immigration from a certain nation.
Chinese workers were not allowed to enter the country under the new immigration law. Diplomats, tourists, and students were initially permitted entry, but later prohibited as well.
The ability to petition for American citizenship was also taken away from Chinese nationals who were already living in the country.
The Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act, commonly referred to as the Magnuson Act, was passed in 1943, ending the ban and allowing 105 Chinese to enter the nation annually.
How will the revocation of Chinese student visas impact U.S universities?
Approximately 25% of all overseas students in the United States are Chinese, with over 270,000 enrolled for the 2023–2024 school year. International students, who frequently pay full price tuition, are a major source of funding for many universities, particularly smaller private colleges and residential schools.
These institutions have severe financial difficulties already brought on by budget reductions and dwindling enrollment, and the visa revocations threaten to inflict a significant loss of revenue.
Chinese students make substantial contributions to research, especially in vital domains like aerospace, semiconductor engineering, and other STEM subjects.
Revocations of visas for students in certain “critical fields” may interfere with research initiatives and diminish the number of bright researchers and graduate students available, which could impede academic advancement and innovation.
