On May 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Department of State “would work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” The National Association of Scholars (NAS) welcomes and applauds this decision in light of China’s threats to national security and American sovereignty.
When NAS began examining Chinese influence on American campuses in 2017 in the form of Confucius Institutes, we highlighted the danger of Chinese espionage in higher education. In 2018, then-director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Wray testified to the U.S. Senate that Chinese students not only posed a risk to national security, but that higher education was willfully ignorant of the problem. In January, NAS warned that universities were being overlooked as sources of China’s technological advancement. Recent revelations of Chinese spying at Stanford University and investigations into the smuggling of a biological pathogen that involve Chinese nationals at the University of Michigan show that the problem is real and widespread.
This March, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party noted that “one-third” of all international students studying in the hard sciences are Chinese, and that many of these Chinese nationals are affiliated with institutions and entities affiliated with Beijing’s defense sector. The House committee warned that the “student visa system has become a Trojan horse for Beijing, providing unrestricted access to our top research institutions and posing a direct threat to our national security.”
Some Chinese students also serve as agents of Chinese security services, not least to exert oversight and enforce compliance from other Chinese students in America. These agents can serve in any discipline, from the humanities to the social sciences to the hard sciences.
We regret the necessity for this measure. America has benefited from admitting Chinese students, both from the direct contribution they provide to American prosperity and security, and by exposing Chinese students to America’s ideals. We would be glad if the administration could come up with a system that screened out Chinese agents and allowed America to admit all other Chinese student applicants for study in America. But of course, China’s security agencies would attempt at once to foil any such security system. So long as China’s security agencies continue their aggressive actions to penetrate America’s universities, by use of Chinese students studying in the U.S., America’s government must take prudent and tailored actions to defend American national security. We judge that this current action is both prudent and tailored.
In light of the research from NAS, warnings from U.S. security agencies, Congress, and continuing reports of national security breaches on American campuses, the NAS celebrates Marco Rubio’s announcement as a welcome change to policy in countering malign foreign influence in higher education.
