On Wednesday, the chairman of a U.S. House committee dispatched letters to six American universities—Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon among them—to request details regarding their protocols concerning Chinese nationals. This move represents another effort by Congress to restrict the influx of Chinese students into the United States due to worries about national security.
The correspondence requested that the presidents of various universities furnish comprehensive details regarding their complete population of Chinese students by April 1st. This included providing the names of the institutions these students had previously attended, the origins of their tuition funds, as well as the specific types of research activities and academic programs they were involved in.
"The Chinese Communist Party Has set up a thoroughly documented, structured process for integrating researchers into top-tier U.S. institutions, thereby giving them firsthand access to sensitive technologies that have potential dual-use military applications,” stated John Moolenaar, a Republican from Michigan and chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, on Wednesday.
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Moolenaar further stated that America’s student visa system has turned into a Trojan horse for Beijing. If not addressed, this pattern will keep pushing aside American talent, undermine research integrity, and advance China's technological goals at our cost.
The correspondence also inquired into the universities' procedures concerning Chinese students pursuing studies in "STEM" disciplines such as quantum computing in addition to connections with faculty in China.
The six schools targeted also encompassed Purdue University, the University of Illinois, the University of Maryland, and the University of Southern California. These institutions rank as some of the most proactive research centers in the U.S., with substantial populations of Chinese students enrolled.
For example, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, China topped the list as the leading source country for both international students and scholars during the fall semester of 2022.
Recently, US governmental attention towards Chinese students has increased, mirroring persistent worries that these individuals might assist China in bypassing export restrictions and various national security regulations.
This increased focus has put new strain on educational collaborations designed to exchange knowledge and reduce boundaries between the United States and China.
Last week, Republican members of both the House and Senate proposed a bill to ban all Chinese nationals from acquiring student visas, sparking anger among Democratic lawmakers Asian-American groups.
Earlier, correspondence from Moolenaar's committee prompted multiple U.S. universities to declare they would end collaborations with educational institutions in China.
These have encompassed prominent research universities such as the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and Georgia Tech, along with more teaching-oriented institutions including Oakland University in Michigan and Alfred University in New York.
The scrutiny from the committee and Republicans has mainly been directed at graduate students and collaborations within STEM fields. This trend continued with the letters sent out on Wednesday.
Currently, Chinese citizens form the second-biggest contingent of international students in the US, following Indian nationals.
The New York-based Institute of International Education reports that 277,398 students from China were enrolled in U.S. institutions for the 2023-24 academic year, and over half—specifically 50.4 percent—chose to study STEM fields.
According to a 2022 report from Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, individuals from China and India together account for almost half of all international STEM graduates who remain in the U.S. following their studies.
In February 2017, according to the report, approximately 90 percent of Chinese citizens who earned their STEM doctorates in the United States between 2000 and 2015 continued to reside in America, whereas only 66 percent of graduates from other nations did so during the same period.
In 2020, during his initial term as US President,DonaldTrump Donald Trump signed a proclamation that led to the revocation of over 1,000 visa applications For Chinese citizens classified as "high-risk graduate students and research scholars."
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The article initially appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), which is the premier source for news coverage of China and Asia.
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