News that the U.S. will "aggressively" begin revoking visas held by Chinese students reverberated through China as well as U.S. education institutions relying on Chinese talent this week, drawing wide condemnation. Education groups and academics argue the overall benefits of welcoming students from China have created a net positive for American innovation and economic growth.
"The chilling effect on potential students will be enormous," warns Rosie Levine, the executive director of the U.S.-China Education Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit. "By turning away Chinese students, the U.S. will lose a critical reserve of soft power and talent that directly contributes to our competitiveness."
Trump administration officials argue Chinese students are a national security risk because they return to China with American know-how and can help facilitate intellectual property theft while in the U.S. Members of Congress have alleged that some Chinese students could be used in state espionage campaigns and pose security risks to universities that receive federal funding.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday that affected students will include "those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields," adding that "we will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong."
"We will not tolerate the CCP's exploitation of U.S. universities or theft of U.S. research," said Tammy Bruce, a State Department spokesperson, on Thursday, in response to a journalist's request to clarify Rubio's announcement.
Chinese students have been under scrutiny for years
Until last year, China was the biggest source of foreign students in the U.S., but it has been overtaken by India as China's tensions with the U.S. accumulate. There are nearly 280,000 Chinese students currently in the U.S.
In 2020, to stop intellectual property theft, the United States started to screen Chinese graduate students who wished to do research in the U.S. for potential military ties.
Nicholas Burns, who served as the American ambassador to China during the Biden administration, says if a Chinese citizen has connections to the military or the intelligence services, "Certainly we don't want those people in our country."
But Burns calls it "not rational" to revoke visas from such a broad category of Chinese students: "To essentially say to those people, largest country in the world, along with India, 'you are hereby excluded from the United States if you have any connection whatsoever with the Communist Party,' I think that's shortsighted."
The "gospel" of American education
For decades, the allure of a prestigious American education has endured among Chinese families and students, even when U.S.-China relations have soured.
"I would say that Chinese parents, they believe that the U.S. News and World Report ranking [of colleges and universities] is the Bible, and they want to attend the very best school," says Brian Taylor, a managing partner at Ivy Coach, an admissions counseling company that says about one-tenth of its clientele comes from China.
Yingyi Ma, a sociology professor at Syracuse University, has termed the craze in China for elite American universities an education "gospel" that appeals to Chinese parents seeking alternatives to the ultra-competitive and rigid Chinese education system. Books like Harvard Girl, detailing how the author gained admission to the elite university, became bestsellers and students who gained entry to Ivy League schools were catapulted to celebrity status in China, going on talk shows and becoming speakers.
"The whole soft power of American education and the U.S. culture is still very palpably felt," says Ma.
So strong is the allure of a prestigious American education that even China's political elite send their progeny to the United States to study. Chinese leader Xi Jinping sent his daughter to Harvard for her undergraduate education. The son of his political rival, the jailed politician Bo Xilai, also went to Harvard for a master's degree and later earned a law degree from Columbia University.
Many middle-class Chinese parents see higher education and a chance to work abroad as pathways to professional success. "We call that the China dream. It's so similar, ironically, to the American dream," says Tomer Rothschild, one of the founders of U.S.-based Elite Scholars of China, a consulting company that counsels mainly Chinese students as they apply to top-ranked U.S. universities and colleges.
They came to study, they stayed to work
A 2022 study by Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology found around 90% of Chinese nationals who came to the U.S. to study in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields between 2000 and 2015 stayed and worked in the U.S. after graduating, contributing to scientific fields in the U.S.
"That's a really important force multiplier for the United States," says Cole McFaul, a research analyst who monitors U.S.-China tech competition at CSET.
A tally by the Institute of Progress think tank of 25 leading American artificial intelligence companies found a majority were founded by entrepreneurs born in China and India. As demand for science and technology research has grown in the U.S., universities have expanded the number of graduate and postdoctoral students they employ. About half of those working in STEM fields are now are foreign-born, according to the National Science Foundation.
"I see that as America's No. 1 advantage in our kind of tech competition with China. That's something that China is not able to do, right? They aren't a big draw for foreign students, and so this kind of free and open research ecosystem that we've nurtured over the last 75-plus years is a tremendous strength for the U.S.," says McFaul.
Now that strength is at risk, says Levine of the U.S.-China Education Trust. "These overly broad policies will undermine these benefits in pursuit of narrow national security goals," she says, referring to Rubio's announcement on visa revocations.
Numerous attempts to pare back international students
In 2018, Trump White House aide Stephen Miller advocated banning all students from China in the U.S. Later, the Trump administration reportedly floated but did not ultimately pursue the idea of a travel ban for Communist Party members and their families.
This week, the U.S. also said it was pausing any new interview slots for all student visa applications, sending waves of anxiety through Chinese students in the process of applying for visas to begin their fall semester in the U.S.
"Many of them are losing their minds," says Rothschild, the college counselor, of anxious Chinese families he is in touch with over the new policy developments.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration also tried and failed to terminate the immigration status of at least 1,800 foreign students, many of whom are Chinese citizens.
Even before Rubio's announcement, the number of Chinese students opting to come to the U.S. was falling. Some are choosing to stay at home; China has been pouring funding into its own public universities, which are now globally competitive in medicine and engineering and hope to retain Chinese students who would otherwise opt to study abroad. Other Chinese students are choosing other Anglophone countries like the United Kingdom and Canada.
"Overall, the cachet is going down," says Ma of American universities. "Really, you only have the most motivated students and the most motivated families that are sending their children abroad."
Copyright 2025 NPR
