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Foreigners in China worry about their future as Beijing, Washington clash
- ‘I fear the political environment will deteriorate to such a degree that … I’ll face hostility or just won’t get my visa,’ businessman with Chinese wife says
- ‘If Trump bans graduate students, then China could ban graduate students too,’ American researcher says
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American student Sam Goldstein thought he had the perfect plan for this year. After securing a prestigious Fulbright scholarship from the US government to research excavated manuscripts from the Warring States Period (475-221BC) in China for a year, he flew to Shanghai in January.
After deciding where he wanted to live, he started looking at flats and even met up with his fellow academics at the city’s Fudan University.
But two weeks after Goldstein arrived, the Chinese government went on high alert in response to the Covid-19 outbreak, while the US issued travel warnings, so he returned home to the US.
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Five months on, work on his dissertation has halted and his scholarship has been suspended. He said he feared that the tensions between Beijing and Washington might stop him ever going back to China.
Goldstein is by no means a lone example. Expatriates in China and others with ties to the country have been getting increasingly rattled in recent months as the hostility between the US and China – over trade, geopolitics, technology and, most recently, the coronavirus – has steadily increased.
US President Donald Trump has announced visa restrictions for Chinese students and state media journalists, imposed controls on Chinese technology firms and threatened to revoke Hong Kong’s special status after Beijing announced its plan to introduce a national security law for the city.
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