Chinese citizens lining up for visa interviews outside the American Embassy in Beijing. Photo: Simon Song
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https://scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3012997/us-universities-brace-decline-chinese-students-after-beijing Diplomacy
US universities brace for decline in Chinese students after Beijing warning
- American academia becomes newest front in US-China friction
- As tensions mount and distrust expands the two sides face off in new areas
Some US educators are bracing for a decline in the number of undergraduate and graduate applicants from mainland China next year. Photo: Xinhua
Beijing’s pointed warning on Monday that Chinese students should reassess their prospects for obtaining US visas amid heightened tensions between the two countries is raising concerns in the American academic community.
Chinese undergraduate and graduate students make up the largest portion of foreign students at US universities by far, and that proportion has steadily increased over the past 40 years, according to the US Department of Education’s National Centre for Education Statistics.
“American universities are unanimous in their statements about how much they welcome Chinese students, and a number of university presidents are on record about that,” said John Holden, a senior director at McLarty Associates and a former head of the US-China Strong Foundation, which seeks to increase the number of Americans studying Mandarin.
Analysts said that as tensions mount and distrust expands, the two sides are facing off in new areas.
“This is the next iteration of where this is going as it moves from the economy and security to people-to-people,” said Jude Blanchette, a senior adviser with US-based consultancy Crumpton Group, and author of the book China’s New Red Guard. “Both the US and China are going to weaponise talent. China is not wrong to issue this warning.”
In addition to undercutting scholarship and people-to-people contact between the two nations, limits on Chinese enrolment threatens to curtail the cash these students typically bring to university coffers as full-paying students.
In 1980, China represented less than 1 per cent of foreign students. That figure rose rapidly after the 2008-09 global financial crisis as universities scrambled to make up revenue shortfalls. By the 2017-18 academic year, Chinese made up a third of all foreign students, or 363,341 students.
All told, Chinese students contribute nearly US$13 billion annually to the American economy, according to NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
But Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Centre think tank in Washington, said it may be time to address this legacy.
“Frankly, many universities are overexposed, overdependent on these undergraduates for tuition,” he said. “Given that we haven’t seen the bottom of this, universities need to have plans for a drawdown.”
As with many academic communities, Chinese make up the largest single foreign category of students at the University of Michigan, amounting to some 3,000 of its 47,000 in total enrolment.
Beyond the statistics, however, is the human cost.
“It’s certainly raised the anxiety of all my students, even those who would not seem to be directly affected,” said Mary Gallagher, director of the Lieberthal-Rogel Centre for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan.
Many find it harder to study and harder to stay in the US after they get their degrees. “I’m worried,” Gallagher added. “This is bad.”
She said she was bracing for a decline in the number of undergraduate and graduate applicants from mainland China next year.
A 2018 survey by the Institute of International Education, a non-profit research group based in New York, showed that nearly half of the 540 higher education institutions that responded reported declines in new Chinese enrolment.
The latest data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) show that 25 per cent of H-1B petitions were denied in the three months ending December 31, 2018. Foreign students from US universities need an H-1B visa to work in the country after graduating.
The H-1B denial rate has risen steadily since fiscal 2016, the last full year of former president Barack Obama’s administration, when it stood at 6 per cent.
Gallagher said it’s unclear what criteria the FBI and other parts of the US Government are using to issue or deny student visas.
Daly said China’s warning to its students to recalibrate the risks of studying in the United States was “not unrealistic”.
“Not that there’s cause for their feeling under threat, but because generations of Chinese scholars are feeling like they’re increasingly suspected of being bad actors or spies,” Daly added. “Not all those are warranted. In fact most are not. But it’s a reasonable concern given the political atmosphere.”
Michigan’s Gallagher said the academic chill is going both ways with Americans facing more concern over getting visas and access in China as “tit-for-tat” tensions mount.
“I think it’s really negative overall,” she said.
But the nature of that academic access has been unequal, with American scholars facing far more restrictions in China to archives and visas than Chinese face in the US, said scholars and analysts.
“Chinese scholars who come here have had full access including full access to the archives,” Daly said.
“The US situation is increasingly politicised, but there’s no comparison to China. Chinese universities are run by Communist Party cells with American ideas explicitly warned against,” Daly added. “There’s not perfect parallelism.”
Some also said they suspected broader political forces at work related to the timing of Beijing’s warning, given its proximity to the sensitive 30th anniversary of the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
China can use the warning to “flip the script”, Daly said, given that the US harboured many of the student activists in Tiananmen Square three decades ago. “It works into the Chinese propaganda,” he added.
The US Embassy in Beijing replied to a request for comment: “The United States welcomes hundreds of thousands of students and scholars from China each year, including more than 350,000 in 2018, and the United States remains the top global destination for students, attracting students from almost every country across the globe. We welcome Chinese students and scholars to the United States to conduct legitimate academic activities.
“The US intelligence and law enforcement communities have identified an increasing number of instances in which foreign intelligence services co-opt academics, researchers and others to conduct activities on behalf of foreign governments during the individual’s stay in the United States.
“We cannot publicly discuss details of any specific case; however, when such activity is identified, the appropriate US agencies act to protect US interests and US persons using a variety of legal authorities under our rule of law.”