Opinion | US-China cold war: How Chinese overseas students are getting caught in the crossfire

Name: US colleges face US$15 billion hit as Chinese students stay away amid coronavirus pandemic
Uploaded: 2020-09-06T17:00:22.000Z
Duration: 1 min 25 s
Description: US colleges face US$15 billion hit as Chinese students stay away amid coronavirus pandemic

US hostility is dashing the hopes of many ordinary Chinese seeking a more liberal life, even as jingoistic pressure grows on them to not be seen as Chinese traitors and sell-outs

Reading Time:4 minutes

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Brian Y. S. Wong

Published: 1:00am, 7 Sep 2020Updated: 1:07am, 7 Sep 2020

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently declared that the White House is contemplating further restrictions on Chinese students in the United States over the “coming weeks and months”.

It is fair and square to restrict the entry of individuals who could pose risks to national security – your average turncoat, spy or criminal who violates laws and jeopardises American interests. After all, any reasonable government ought not to put up with foreign agents and interests bent on sabotaging law and order.

Yet as tensions mount, many students from China studying in the West have found themselves caught in the crossfire between a land that they call home, and a land that they want to make home.

The latest restrictions touted by senior American officials ominously foreshadow a marked official pivot away from sensible evidence-informed precautions, into the dangerous terrain of impetuous policymaking and calculating politicking.

From the suspension of joint scholarship programmes by universities to the dog-whistling rhetoric portraying Chinese students as homogenous unthinking extensions of the Chinese state, the West has become a precipitously hostile place for hundreds of thousands of overseas Chinese students.

01:25

US colleges face US$15 billion hit as Chinese students stay away amid coronavirus pandemic

Much as President Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban” was a chilling reminder that the rights of entry and freedoms of movement for people of colour are never secure, even in the Land of the Free, the latest antics of the Trump administration are immoral, irresponsible, and throw under the bus individuals who are neither capable of nor responsible for transforming their governments.

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.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} US hostility is dashing the hopes of many ordinary Chinese seeking a more liberal life, even as jingoistic pressure grows on them to not be seen as Chinese traitors and sell-outs

US hostility is dashing the hopes of many ordinary Chinese seeking a more liberal life, even as jingoistic pressure grows on them to not be seen as Chinese traitors and sell-outs