Washington (AP) -The academic relationships between the USA and China are now exposed to its greatest threat, since the Trump government revoked visas for an unknown number of Chinese students and tightens future Visa screening.
In a brief statement on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Marco Rubio said that the USA will revoke a “aggressive” visa for Chinese students, including those who study connections to the Chinese joint party or “critical areas”.
Rubio’s statement threatened to expand a gap between the two nations and build on a year -long Republican campaign in order to free the US locations of Chinese influence and to isolate the research of America from its strongest economic and military competitors.
Rubios announcement worked out Chinese students and drawn a quick conviction of the Chinese government and some US legislators. Alarm for US locations, on which more than 275,000 students from China take place and benefit from their tuition fees.
The 26 -year -old Chinese doctoral student Kesong Cao decided to give up his studies in the USA for Trump’s politics.
“I no longer feel welcome,” said Cao, a student of cognitive psychology at the University of Wisconsin, who was waiting for a flight to China at Seattle Airport on Thursday.
Cao spent eight years in the United States and dreamed of staying as a professor. “Now it seems like this dream falls apart,” he said. “It’s a good time to jump ship and think about what I can give back to my own country.”
The scope of the Visa advancement was not immediately clear without explaining what connections to the Communist Party would be. However, the effects could be significant if the government pursues a student with family members in the party, said Sun Yun, director of the China program in Washington-based Think Tank Stimson Center.
Academic relationships with China have been built for decades
The academic leaders in the United States have tried for years to augment hostility to Chinese students and scientists, and said the advantages of the relationship outweigh the risks. Cooperation between the countries creates tens of thousands of scientific newspapers each year and leads to considerable progress in areas from the earthquake forecast to the treatment of diseases.
The academic alliance has been built over for decades since both sides resumed diplomatic relationships in the 1970s. Chinese researchers are the most common international co-authors for US researchers in articles for science and engineering. Both sides are research power plants.
Every step that prevents the United States from greeting the smartest people in the world is an “extremely bad idea,” said L. Rafael Reif, former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who resisted President Donald Trump against anti-China mood during the first term.
“This administration will historically be known as the one that began the decline of the United States by not understanding the importance of science and technology – and how important it is to collect the most talented human capital out of the world to work together in the direction of a flourishing United States,” Reif told the Associated Press.
Erica Zhang, who completed George Washington University in December and is waiting for the approval of her Green Card, said that the recent policy is “terrible”.
“This is racism, every division based on identity and nationality is racism,” said Zhang. “It’s just a start, it will expand on a larger group of Chinese, not just Chinese students.”
During his first term, Trump shortened the Visa of some Chinese doctoral students from five years to one and signed a command that excluded Chinese students from schools with direct connections to the folk exemption army.
The administration has recently taken extensive measures against international students. It revoke the legal status for thousands of foreign students in the United States this spring before it was the other way around. The administration also tries to block Harvard from enrollment for students, a step that is taken on ice by a judge.
David Lampton, political scientist at John’s Hopkins University, fears that the United States will lose talent. “American universities and society have always successfully rely on their determined search for the best brains in the world,” he said.
However, critics say that it is a one -sided relationship that primarily benefits China.
Some conservatives say that the stock exchanges are a US security risk
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Tammy Bruce, informed the reporters on Thursday that the United States did not tolerate the “exploitation of the US universities of the US communist party or the theft of US research, intellectual property or technologies in order to expand its military power, to remove the intelligence collection or suppress voices in the opposition.”
House Republicans showed a report last year that hundreds of millions of dollars were used in federal finance work, which ultimately increased Chinese advances in artificial intelligence, semiconductor technology and nuclear weapons. The report argued that China’s academic cooperation as a “trojan horses for the technology transfer” served and China accused the “insidious” exploitation of academic cooperation.
At least three American schools ended their partnerships in China, including the University of Michigan and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The Eastern Michigan University was the youngest, who ended a Chinese partnership just a few hours before Rubios.
Critics also refer to the imbalance in student exchange – only a few hundred US students study in China a year, compared to around 370,000 from China, who studied in the USA in 2018. President Xi Jinping In 2023, a campaign started to invite 50,000 teenage Americans to visit China for an exchange and study programs.
US universities themselves have come to rely on Chinese students. Even if the numbers fall off, Chinese students remain the second largest group of international students in the United States behind those from India. Foreign students are usually calculated higher tuition fees and training for American students.
Gary Locke, a former US ambassador to China, said that the vision policy would “disadvantage and deeply” influenced the US university education, research institutions, scientific discoveries and startups.
“The real story isn’t Just About Visa Numbers – It’s About How This Changes the Competitive Landscape for Talent, Innovation and Economic Growth in America. Treating Every Chinese Student As a Security Threat Distory Facts and Fuels Discrimination Againese Americans, Said, now Chair of Committee of 100, A Group of Prominent Chinese Americans Focused on US China Relations and Issued Faced By Chinese Citizens in the Us
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Associated press authors Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco, Matthew Lee and Fu Ting in Washington and Terry Tang in Phoenix contributed to this report.
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