Trump's Next Trade War Target: Chinese Students at Elite Schools | Hacker News Reader

Trump's Next Trade War Target: Chinese Students at Elite Schools

bloomberg.com

186 pointsJumpCrisscross258 comments

Students from China (and many other countries) are required to renew their visas annually, a process which is already quite nerve-wracking for many. PhDs in particular can take anywhere from 4 to 8 years to complete, meaning 4-8 chances for your studies to be interrupted with the only option to return home while the visa renewal stalls. This article explicitly calls out the fact that renewals seem to have been getting slower, which will impact a lot of students.

The US already lost out on multiple academic generations of bright Iranian students and scientists thanks to their restrictive visa policies. If they further hamstring themselves by excluding Chinese students, the decline of American science will accelerate dramatically. Already, science budgets are continually slashed and grants are harder to find. Slowing the pace of scientific development is a short-sighted move that will likely not be felt in full for decades, but it will definitely be felt.

Science exists outside of the USA - now is as good a time as any to consider research in places like Canada, Europe, Japan, Korea, and yes, even China. Language doesn’t need to be a barrier - increasingly, many prolific institutions are conducting much of their work in English.

Already, science budgets are continually slashed and grants are harder to find.

The first point is false. R&D spending is at a record high: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44307.pdf Government's share of funding has fallen below 50%, but only because business r&d spending has increased so much. Federal R&D budgets are increasing: https://cen.acs.org/policy/research-funding/US-science-fundi...

If the 2nd part is true, it's only because the amount of proposals is growing faster than the funding.

US R&D spending as a whole is up, but a lion's share of that (per your first link) is "development" ($314.5bn of $495.1bn). Academic environments, which are the ones affected by student visa policies and such, primarily engage in basic and applied research (not development), and are largely funded by the national government. Industry grants exist and can be real boons for researchers, but often come with strings attached and are often disproportionately targeted towards certain sectors.

National funding for academic research, unfortunately, has been flat (or falling) over the last several years, and has repeatedly been targeted for cuts by the President (luckily reined in by Congress). For example, see the NSF's funding survey: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/assets/968/figu...

Have the definitions/concepts of research in its various forms kept constant in these figures? I know that at least in Europe those have drifted considerable under the influence of industry lobbying to expand more and more into the higher regions of the Technology Readiness Levels [1] model that formerly were definitely not included under the 'R&D' umbrella.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level

Your first point is incorrect.

First a student asks for an F-1 (sometimes J-1) visa. This can be delivered for a single entry (typical for Iranian students for instance), or for 1 or like 5 years (the common case for international students). The visa lets you _enter_ the country.

Once admitted in the US, a student can remain indefinitely while maintaining its student status (including school transfers). This applies to Chinese students as well. There is no renewal and if you only go to school or transfer school, nothing can really happen. There's nothing to renew every year.

The issue that arises is when a student leaves the US with an expired VISA. Then he has to apply for a new one before coming back. This is where it can get complicated. I have a student/friend who go stuck 4 months (in China) waiting to renew his VISA.

This also bars people from leaving the country to attend conferences (an essential part of many grad students’ training), visit family or just travel - all things that many students need to do regularly. Having an expired visa is very much not a situation you want to be in.

I wonder if the "one entry doesn't count if you're going to Canada" wildcard works for those kind of visas

Automatic Revalidation? Yes it works for F visas.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...

>>> The visa lets you _enter_ the country.

No, the VISA gives you an opportunity to talk to border control and not to deny entry immediately. They decide if they let you in or not.

For the uninformed downvoter crew:

"Entering the U.S. on an employment visa may be described as a three-step process in most cases.[5] First, the employer files an application with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services requesting a particular type of category visa for a specific individual.[5] If the employer's application is approved, it only authorizes the individual to apply for a visa; the approved application is not actually a visa.[5] The individual then applies for a visa and is usually interviewed at a U.S. embassy or consulate in the native country.[5] If the embassy or consulate gives the visa, the individual is then allowed to travel to the U.S.[5] At the border crossing, airport, or other point of entry into the U.S.,

>>>>>> the individual speaks with an officer from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to ask for admission to the U.S.[5] If approved, the individual may then enter the U.S.[5] <<<<<<<"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_the_United_Stat...

So once a student has been on a F-1 visa for more than a year, they face a risk of being barred from re-entering the US if they choose to visit their families?

Yes. Arguably, it's not common, though. But it's certainly possible, and the reason some decide not to leave.

So... A de facto ban on exiting the country?

No, iirc F1 visas are usually granted for length of program plus one year (5 for a BS etc). As long as the person maintains student status with the university, traveling to and fro is permitted.

No, there is no such a rule.

F-1 VISA are _typically_ granted for 5 years, but PhDs may be longer (6 or even more). Once your VISA expires, and if you go home, you need to reapply for a new one.

For some (a small fraction through), VISA are granted for 1 year or are single entry. Those categories of students sometimes chose not to leave the country, for the risk of getting their VISA denied (and, hence, their whole studies and everything with it) is too high (since they got a short in the first place). This is very common thinking within Chinese or Iranian communities.

This is depressingly inhumane. Why is there no advocacy around the issue?

The current political climate has immigrants being the punching bag for every ill of society: drugs, gangs, unemployment, you name it. Pushing for legislation in the area is a non-starter for any politician that wants to get reelected.

Because bureaucratic injustice committed against (typically) rich foreigners aren't exactly high up the priority list for most Americans.

Is the F-1 5 years these days? In my day (~10 years ago) it was 4 years plus a 12 months work permit. If you had a paid summer internship inside of the 4 years, those months worked got deducted from your post-graduation work permit. I had 2 summer internships and a little less than 6 months on my work permit when I graduated.

If you overstay the length of your Visa you also run the risk of being eliminated from any future Visa considerations,whether for work, study or tourism.

At the same time, there are a fair amount of public examples of Chinese academics taking US research budgets and running with the results. Or intelligence agents posing as students and swiping everything from university systems. The Confucius Institutes seem similarly nefarious.

There needs to be a balance. Cutting out every Chinese academic is absurd and xenophobic, but more scrutiny is needed.

This issue isn't black and white; a more nuanced approach is required. To pretend that there isn't some merit to some of these ideas is just as absurd as saying that every academic is a spy.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/29/fbi-director-...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/education-or-espionage-ch...

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3007903/chi...

> yes, even China

Just going to leave this here [1]. That's at Peking University, top school in the country. Sure, if you're a foreigner, you'll probably be left alone, but your classmates are not allowed to be themselves, and that's part of your learning environment.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/if-i-disap...

> . If they further hamstring themselves by excluding Chinese students, the decline of American science will accelerate dramatically

it is a strange assumption to make since by all counts the US is already the country in the world with the most diverse population. It is not as if science is only the work of students or even in particular foreign students...

The US has a massive advantage in science (and business) in that many of the best and brightest from across the world want to come to the US, despite the hurdles and issues of getting student visas or work visas.

This means that as a country you don't have to pay for the primary and secondary schooling of all these people, but you get to reap the rewards of them working in your country and contributing to your scientific lead, to your economy.

But like all advantages, if you don't pay attention, you can squander it. You can make it easy for smart Chinese students (in this instance) to do science in the US and benefit US academia and businesses, or you can make it hard, and the same people will instead benefit some other economy.

It's not about diversity, it's about not realizing that the free firehose of cheap and willing smarts and labour isn't perpetual, that it actually has to be maintained and encouraged.

> This means that as a country you don't have to pay for the primary and secondary schooling of all these people

You don't have to pay for an order of magnitude more people: education is not a technology yet, it could give no guarantees on a results. To get one bright student you need to teach ten people through primary and secondary school.

If its like the UK International students are a source of income as they pay more and subsidise the locals.

A lot of the prestigious schools in the United States could not charge tuition going forward for decades and be fine financially still, they have massive endowments.

Harvard, Yale, University of Texas, Stanford, Princeton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Texas A&M, University of Michigan, Northwestern University, Columbia University all have 10-30 billion EACH.

Roughly 100 colleges in the United States have endowments exceeding 1 billion dollars. Even with a billion in a broad market index fund they could burn 30 million a year and likely never run out of money, I think the most expensive tuition in the country is like 60k or some such, so the poorest of those 100 schools could take at least 500 students a year for free and not go broke.

There are about a dozen universities in the United States that have research budgets alone exceeding 1 billion dollars a year.

Kinda makes you wonder why college tuition is so expensive at those 100~ schools...

And I don't think those endowments include real estate value or income from IP the schools own thanks to research conducted there.

How did universities ever manage to operate whilst charging much lower/no tuition back when there was not a group like this?

They only catered for a much smaller group basically the elites and a few lucky Grammar school kids.

Here is a related and comprehensive article that dives into the subject, for anyone interested: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/15/increasingly-competiti...

There were a lot fewer university students back when you could attend a polytechnical institute and make a living wage in a factory. With globalization and deindustrialization, Britain is now a "knowledge economy" so you have hundreds of thousands more in universities.

They were funded by the state. Funding which has been systematically cut back over the past 2 decades.

State funding.

Funding was shifted to fees. Although considering how much of student loans is not expected to be repaid it's arguable that a lot is still state funded...

primary and secondary education costs virtually nothing compared to college so thats a pretty weak point to make.

You could make the exact reverse point, that universities in the US have built their expertise over decades if not centuries and Foreign students are largely benefiting more from them than whatever they could get in their home countries.

> primary and secondary education costs virtually nothing compared to college.

Except that this isn't true at all.

I said compared to college. Not in absolute terms.

Yes that was understood.

So... can you point me to a source showing high school students having years of debt?

It's a win-win thing for the U.S. and the students. (arguably a loss for the country of origin who sees their best and brightest fly away.) No one here is denying the impact of restrictions on students, we are pointing out it is also bad for the US.

> The US has a massive advantage [...] in that many of the best and brightest from across the world want to come to the US

And it's really, really actively fighting against it: electing Trump (and the consequences with it) is not the least they did in that perspective.

I don't think it's a conscious choice, I think that since the US has been a magnet for talent for so long, a lot of politicians, and a lot of people, have normalized it and think it's the natural order of things. They think that talent will keep coming, no matter what policies they implement, and that is simply not true.

60-80% of graduate students in STEM fields in the U.S. are international students. It seems like having 60-80% fewer graduates would accelerate the decline of American science.

“[B]etween 1995 and 2015, the number of full-time domestic students enrolled in graduate computer science programs increased by 45 percent, from 8,627 to 12,539 students, while the number of full-time international graduate students increased by about 480 percent, from 7,883 in 1995 to 45,790 in 2015.”

CS went from less than 50% to nearly 80% foreign graduate students over 10 years. Quite interesting!

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/10/11/foreign...

The lack of a stable career path accelerates the decline of American science.

The schools might have to let natives in; the horror. We might have to return to the dark ages of the 1950s when the STEM graduates were majority Americans and we actually were making technological progress in something other than lithography.

"Science" is addicted to cheap foreign labor, which has ruined the market for natives.

If you restrict the pool of applicants, the quality of the student body will go down. That's basically a law of nature.

Schools aren't accepting foreign students because they're cheaper. They actually have greater apprehension about foreign students, because their language skills might be lacking, and because the American professors judging the applications might not personally know the foreign professors writing the recommendation letters.

Science is largely done by graduate students and postdocs. Professors are busy writing grants, teaching classes, advising students and sitting on committees. Their role in science is largely managerial, and in providing overall vision. All the grunt work and detail gets done by people below them. My point is that having smart and capable students is critical.

If you go into a top STEM department in the US, you'll probably see that a large majority of students are foreigners. If you were to exclude them, you could replace them with Americans, but those Americans would, on average, have lower grades, lower test scores and less previous research experience. Their work would not be as good, and the productivity of the department would fall.

The excluded students would instead go to top universities in other countries. Those universities would begin doing better research as a result. My prediction is that within a decade, you would see Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley et al. fall off the top of the rankings, replaced by the top universities in Europe, one or two universities in Canada, and perhaps a few Asian universities.

Certainly increased acceptance rates for domestic students would impact which schools they go to. But do you have any data indicating that a) there are a significant number of domestic students who apply to STEM programs and get rejected from all of them and relatedly b) the demand for grad school positions is sufficiently elastic to match an 80% increase in supply?

I'm not sure what your point was with the casual dismissal of 70 years of research in every field besides lithography. Am I supposed to think that international students only work on lithography? Most lithography research, as far as I'm aware, doesn't even happen in academia.

Compared to the previous 70 years, the last 70 years of scientific and technological research has been complete and utter shit, except for lithography. Pretty simple, really. The presence of all that cheap labor in the last 70 years has objectively not made things better. Mind you, in raw numbers we have at least 10x the number of active workers in the sciences in the last 70 years as in the previous 70 years; and less is getting done. Imagine that!

Your first point is a red herring: the presence of cheap labor in the sciences and the lack of decent jobs makes it unattractive to any sane person who was born in a first world country.

Who are these natives you speak of? Last I checked we are a nation of immigrants. If not you then your parents, grandparents and their parents.

Natives = people who were born and grew up here. Stop being intentionally obtuse. Nobody is native on a long enough timeline.

Don’t most of them return to their home countries? Seems like freeing up those spots for American students that will stay would be a boon for American science.

That would seem to indicate that Americans who want to do STEM courses cannot currently do them? That doesn't sound right to me.

"Freeing up those spots" implies that US students are barred from competing for grad school places or that international students have some advantage that domestic students do not.

> international students have some advantage that domestic students do not.

They often do have more money. And rampant cheating. But regardless, Chinese students can attend any university in China or the US, while an American cannot realistically attend school in China. Obviously that means China is going to have a brighter educational future, as they use our system to advance their own.

Money doesn't make a difference in grad school because everybody is there on some kind of fellowship or research grant. Certainly no international student I've ever met, Chinese or otherwise has paid a cent of tuition past undergrad. Only exceptions would be medical school, MBA and specialist MSc programs offered through business schools.

> Money doesn't make a difference in grad school

It makes a very big difference in getting there.

If they're cheating then they won't hang on to those research spots for long.

No, because graduate students are actually doing the science in the US.

If they are replaced by less capable students then the work being done will be of a lower quality.

Citation needed, and the colloquialism is actually “by all accounts.” Here is one for you: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/18/the-most-an...

That depends a lot by what you call culturally diverse. This map makes you think that Africa is the most diverse continent of all, but the fact is pretty much only the US has and continues receiving people from all over the world, and not just neighboring countries.

Only country? You should visit Canada.

Its fascinating how America is slowly turning into a country that simply doesn't want foreigners. Sadly I like New York so I have to diligently go through the mountain of paperwork. How many people from the EU overstay or cause problems for the police?!

How did you get that impression? From what the article says America is only getting more conscious about foreigners from China, not foreigners in general. They are quite different.

This is hardly a surprising move considering the recent realization that the Chinese government has been pushing propaganda against American values like freedom, democracy, and basic human rights, on American soil. One notable example is confucius institutes [0].

[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2019/01/1...

It's hard not to get that impression with cage-camps at the borders, asking foreign travelers for all their social media details and locking out nationalities like Iranians and Chinese from certain ventures.

Yet, here you are claiming it's "all just Chinese propaganda", apparently completely unaware about the fact that a statement like that is pretty much it's very own propaganda by deflecting everything that could be wrong as a mere invention by the "enemy from outside".

But when outrageous claims are made about China [0], the vast majority of people just gobble them up like it's manifest truth itself, without even thinking about questioning the methodology or the involved parties motives.

[0] https://www.aspi.org.au/report/mapping-xinjiangs-re-educatio...

Did I claim "all just Chinese propaganda"? I was taught in mathematical induction lessons that necessary condition does not equal sufficient condition.

I don't disagree with the rest of your statements. But I think even after disregarding an open southern border, the US is still relatively open.

> not foreigners in general.

By requesting their social network identity, right. That's being conscious.

> propaganda against American values like freedom, democracy, and basic human rights, on American soil.

Well... someone skipped reading the news for the past 3 years. The best propaganda against these values comes from your very current president and administration.

> Well... someone skipped reading the news for the past 3 years

Which didn't do a good job of informing the public.

The argument is dishonest, because policies related to surveillance were implemented by all governments of the last decade. On the contrary, this lead to many, many people to say "fuck it", let us just take this madness to the next level and see what happens.

Had the current president not won, we would certainly have increased efforts in the war on terror. The US even created a complete new agency for checking travelers. That has been the strategy for both parties for quite some time, at least a decade now.

>The argument is dishonest, because policies related to surveillance were implemented by all governments of the last decade

This is technically correct but I'd like to point out it easily rounds to two decades. Most of the surveillance state stuff ramped up after 9/11 which was almost 20yr ago.

I'm not saying it didn't start long ago.

Not saying Democrats are clean either - however, in this instance, last time I checked history books, Reagan/Bush & Republicans mostly inherit the chaos they unleashed by their interventions in Middle East in the past 30 years.

Had the current president not won... who cares? He _is_ there today. And he _is_ _breaking_ the country that elected him as well as _all the alliances this country built in the past century.

The apathy is real.

If you are implying Donald Trump is my president, that is incorrect. It's dangerous to make assumptions when you are not keeping a level head.

If requesting social network identity is not being more conscious, what is it? It is not a blanket ban. For all we know, social network identity is just more information for making a more informed decision on the visa application.

Right. With this logic, in a few years, we will all travel naked and not be allowed to cross a border without an all-orifices probe.

"First they ..."

Brits overstay and work in the US without the correct paperwork all the time. They don't seem to get noticed by the police for some reason.

I know a Brit who is banned for life from America for not having a visa when he got searched on a bus. Maybe he had a fake permit or something too, I can't remember.

Maybe they're less likely to get searched/caught, but when they are it seems to be enforced. I can't find any stats supporting either position though.

China is causing problems for USA. Right or wrong, USA thinks that they are essentially educating their future battle enemy.

"Researchers" aren't exactly your typical students though. They contribute a huge amount to the IP developed within a country.

PhD students do a lot a the grunt work that more famous people get most of the credit for.

> They contribute a huge amount to the IP developed within a country.

And can willingly, or under coercion by their home government (We'll put your parents in prison, rape your mother, have you stabbed in the street), hand over every last bit of data they have access to on any project(s). Considering most decent educational institutions receive mountains of defense department money and have all sorts of government-involved research projects for all sorts of emerging technologies that have anything remotely approaching intelligence community or military applications... I can see why we'd want to crack down, purely for opsec reasons, on students coming from a country that is most likely going to overtly be our enemy sometime in the near to mid-term future.

But seriously, why would a Chinese student, born, raised and educated in China, be loyal to USA because he studied here for x years? USA and China are heading to a collision of sorts, China would not trust thousands of US born students and researchers in high positions.

This is the kind of approach to things that I tend to associate with the global non-denominational death cult.

That's an over-generalization. No country is one entity in the context of "what it thinks".

Well, someone makes that decision. Today is Trump and his advisers (if he listens to anyone :)) and Congress. No polls or votes are taken on things like banning Chinese students or not.

Frankly, I don't think we should educate anyone that goes back to a hostile country. China is rising, and that can cause a lot of problems for us, see China Sea for one. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/03/china-army-colonel-says-beij...

The genius of American policy.

Create a hostile environment for Chinese students so that they are encouraged to return home.

Then prevent them from coming at all because they may return home.

This completely ignored that the massive majority of Chinese stay in the US, and even more would stay in the US contributing disproportionately more than nearly every other grouping of people.

If it wasn't for the US driving them away, it's hard to see why any Chinese national, especially a well educated one, would ever choose to leave the US for China.

>Frankly, I don't think we should educate anyone that goes back to a hostile country. China is rising, and that can cause a lot of problems for us, see China Sea for one.

This would be an utterly disasterous policy. The only reason to enact it is if your own side is actively seeking war.

And may I note that irrespective of the overall behaviour of the two regimes, in the case of complaining about China causing problems for US interests in the China sea, the China sea is a lot nearer to China than it is to the US.

>>in the case of complaining about China causing problems for US interests in the China sea, the China sea is a lot nearer to China than it is to the US.

Trade routes over for one. Freedom of navigation is another reason. What they might go after next time is another concern. Like it or not, USA has interests and allies over there.

When you enter the country you get a stamp with your entry date.

Doesn't this get checked when you leave, at passport control?

I would think at the very least it would raise a huge red flag the next time you try to enter US...

I also doubt that any serious employer would hire someone without checking his/her paperwork, outside maybe of seasonal/server jobs.

The U.S. doesn't have traditional outbound passport control - checks are made electronically when you book a plane ticket and the airlines are given a go/no-go to issue a boarding pass.

I must have entered/exited US about a dozen times in the last few years and I always had my passport checked by someone in uniform just before Security, when leaving.

Are these people not from Immigration/Border control?

Nope, they're from the TSA. Their job is to keep the transportation system safe and secure.

This is travel document checking by a TSA agent. They don't technically require you to show a passport, but most other acceptable forms of ID are very US-specific.

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification

>When you enter the country you get a stamp with your entry date.

>Doesn't this get checked when you leave, at passport control?

Imagine that there is this huge underground market dedicated to solving this problem for you attached mysteriously to the entire US bar industry.

edit - this is honestly the only thing that makes sense. I haven't ever done so, but brits working their US holidays and massively over staying visas by years is not uncommon and I can only think of one example of someone who ended up in actual shit.

I'm not saying that something like this does not exists (and I know for certain that some people overstay their visas), but it just seems silly to me that people coming from countries with similar quality of life and opportunities as the US would risk getting caught doing something illegal, in a country that is notoriously strict on immigration matters.

Brits abroad are not commonly stereotyped for their rationality. The USA is basically viewed as a giant theme park.

"Europe is home to 1.64 million researchers, while the US number approaches 1.47 million. ... Europe produced 33.4% of the world's research outputs, while the US accounted for 23.4%."

The US is not really leading the way. It's a bit strange to "consider" Europe as a potential good place for research, it's already way ahead the US.

Europe's population is double what the US is...

Well, the number of researchers obviously isn’t

That's hardly far ahead, barely 11% more than the US. The opposite is true on means, budget and research infrastructure, where the US leads, both in aggregate and per capita, and by much more than 11%.

Don't the majority of foreign PhD students return to their home countries when complete anyway?

Yes - but not entirely by choice. Many a PhD student has returned home after earning their degree, because of the US's visa policies, which make it hard to stay after completing a degree. Why would they stay somewhere that doesn't want them?

Current visa rules make it very easy to stay. STEM graduate students on an F-1 visa get a whopping 36 months of employment authorization in the US. Look up OPT extension. That's 3 years they can apply to get a H-1B.

In fact, getting a M.S. from a mediocre U.S. school is a popular method young people use to immigrate.

You and I have very different definitions of easy. Nervously waiting for a year to find out whether you'll be lucky enough to stay, then not really having any job mobility for several more years is not exactly easy. God forbid you want to start a family. Honestly in a few years it probably won't be worth the hassle. Maybe it's a good thing (no excuse but to build our sh*tty countries)

H1-B provides for a terrible quality of life, and is only attractive if options in home country are worse.

It is in many cases ask any Indian on a h1b about the Dickensian employment laws in India reliving letters etc.

I know, and it’s why Indians use H1B, but it’s a terrible policy to be 1 step above Dickensian Indian labor laws and also hurts Americans for the benefit of the owners of capital.

H1-B is slavery. No smart young person that has any choice in his life should be subjected to it.

Many do because they can't stay.

This is exactly the reason I do not live in the US. Not only the VISA renewal is a big hurdle, sometimes totally randomly they deny you application. Adding the unconstitunal practices at the border where I need to reveal private content and trade secrets to the border control people and you are making sure that many of us are going to work or doing PHD somewhere else. For bonus points, it is not possible to save your details in the gov database so you need to re-enter all the 10 pages of information by hand every time you apply for a VISA. That is right, you need to keep re-entering the same information over and over, again and again.

Was American science declining in the 1960s when almost no Chinese students were in American universities? Could there also be extremely smart people in Africa that might now find a place in American universities? Are there Americans that might now find a place in American Universities? I am not saying anything about visa policies, but suggesting that limiting Chinese students will hurt American science is a pretty narrow view. There is also a counter argument that many bright Chinese students go back to China, thus strengthening China. There is also another view that some Chinese students are working for or carrying the water for Beijing’s government. Students in China can’t just decide to go to the US, they have to be approved by the Chinese government and there is no doubt that such approvals require allegiance to the CCP and and some willingness to help the CCP when asked. Attributing nothing but good intentions for the 350,000 Chinese students admitted to the US each year is naïve.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/chines...

The world today is very different from the 1960s, particularly regarding both the US and China. I have absolutely no doubt that there are unbelievably intelligent people in Africa now, just as there were (and of course are) in China and everywhere else where people exist.

The lack of infrastructure, support and adequate living conditions is all that severely limits them from reaching their potential and they know this, which is why they climb the Everest of bureaucratic hurdles to get to a place like the US. China is a unique case because it has become wealthy (enough) very quickly and critically also has a very large population, which statistically increases the chances of very intelligent people appearing given the right conditions; if 1% of a billion population is very intelligent that's 10 million people in real terms.

I don't think the US has the dominance it did in science like it did in the 60s, when Europe and Japan were still recovering from war and China was still poor. I think the loss of a large number of Chinese students would certainly have an affect on the US's development in science today.

> there is no doubt that such approvals require allegiance to the CCP and and some willingness to help the CCP when asked.

No, they really don’t. Where’s your source for this? You make it sound like we’re just admitting 350,000 spies into the States each year.

However, it is true that if you make these folks feel thoroughly unwelcome, they will want to just go home and help out - and that’s exactly what you’ll do by (a) being baselessly suspicious of them and (b) being harsh when they try to stay for studies or immigrate.

I dunno about OP, but there are definitely industrial spy issues, and individual Chinese students do have issues with the government in traveling to the US. I had a Chinese student who I would have loved to keep in the US, but according to him, his parents would suffer because they worked in the banking industry, and they'd fall under suspicion.

If hurt feelings are going to make someone fight for a totalitarian regime, that itself would be plenty reason to be suspicious. Of course, assuming that's even true -- it's not like you provided a source or anything.

Students in China can’t just decide to go to the US, they have to be approved by the Chinese government and there is no doubt that such approvals require allegiance to the CCP and and some willingness to help the CCP when asked.

What on earth are you talking about? I mean they have to get a passport, true. This takes about 10 days, but has no special requirements.

But that's the same situation as in the US, where school students literally recite the pledge of allegiance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_passport#Fee_and_proce...

American science was doing “well” in the 60’s because Europe was still recovering.

Today, the US “competes” (to some extent) with Europe for the best and brightest.

I like what Tom Lehrer had to say about this:

"What's going to get us to the Moon? Good old American know-how, provided by good old Americans like Herr Doktor Werner von Braun."

I was a grad student when the Tienanmen Square demonstrations happened. Chinese students in the US formed the backbone of a network that maintained communication with their compatriots in China.

I personally think that welcoming international students and treating them with goodwill is good foreign policy.

I agree with you in principle... anything that potentially averts a WWIII, I’m willing to try. In practice though I see almost no integration between US and Chinese students (at the undergrad level anyways) on campuses. At most institutions there is a huge community of Chinese students, enough that there does not seem to be a need to go beyond it in order to have a social life. A lot of the students I interact with, even after 3-4 years living in the US, still speak almost no English, for example. I confess to being at a loss, at times, as to what the point of hosting so many undergrads from China really is. (Other than making a lot of money for the university.)

After university, many foreign students stay in the US.

Majority US-born teams are vanishingly rare at all of the tech companies I’ve encountered, and that includes some of the biggest companies to early phase startups.

I can’t imagine Silicon Valley continuing to function without a constant influx of foreign talent.

In Australia, all Chinese students were allowed to stay if they so wished after Tiananmen, the Prime Minister at the time made it happen. I think that was a proud moment for Australia. Times have changed, immigration is now a particularly obscene political tool, as is climate change.

And now the Australian University industry is nothing more than a scam that will print degrees for the highest bidders.

Talking of scams, someone I know does Architecture studies in Europe with some Chinese people. There's a couple who speak very little English, too little to be able to properly participate in group projects. Which is surprising at first, because there's a selection process there, which should filter that out. Apparently, in China, there's a thriving industry for fabricating portfolios and ghost writing motivation letters, and it's a common way of climbing the diploma ladder. I'm not sure how those people manage to not fail their exams though, because from the stories I heard they can understand very little and express very little.

That’s a bit much. I’ve worked with many international students that were just as good as anyone, and enrich university life and the academic community immensely. Social and traditional media get on the howler about this issue, but it isn’t fair to cast it as a problem that only exists with international students.

> That’s a bit much. I’ve worked with many international students that were just as good as anyone

They get screwed over more than anyone by the lax standards when their resumes get dropped in the international student bin.

> Social and traditional media get on the howler about this issue,

This is from personal experience working with graduates and managing our intern program, which I wasted a great deal of my personal time on. Social media is more focused on the abuses of the student visa that is also rampant.

> but it isn’t fair to cast it as a problem that only exists with international students.

It's certainly not exclusive to international students, but they pay a lot more and universities have a financial incentive to keep them studying regardless of the grades.

It's a wonderful theory, but here are some counterexamples off the top of my head:

Yamamoto: studied extensively in the US but led the charge to attack the US in WWII. Thought we'd be a pushover.

Matsuoko: contemporary of Yamamoto who became Foreign Secretary and similarly though attacking the US was a good idea

Qutb: his time in the US convinced him that the US was evil - he created the philosophical basis for modern islamic terrorism and the Muslim Brotherhood

The CCP (chinese communist party) is conducting extensive influence operations in our universities today.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/chin...

I don't know about the rest, but with regard to Yamamoto, let's quote the man: "In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success."

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/isoroku_yamamoto_224335

Agreed. Hopefully this move really is limited to those "with ties to Beijing", and not simply all Chinese people.

University isn't just a place for learning its a place for networking. Having international students is not just good its economic necessity.

Yes. At that time many Chinese students got green card by taking advantage of the 1989-6-4 (Today is a special day) massacre. There is a special term for those kind of green cards: blood cards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Student_Protection_Act...

It turns out, after a decade, most of those blood card scholars have no problem to work for the communist party government at all, as long as they can get paid.

"In April, three researchers were also let go by the University of Texas’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in connection with an investigation into possible foreign attempts to take advantage of its federally funded research." This is the real reason why visas are getting denied. Why would you want to enjoy the fruits of living and working in America but benefit other countries (even if you once belonged there)?

I must admit to some confusion about why federally-funded cancer research results aren’t available to everyone.

The issue isn't collaboration or information-sharing.

The researchers didn't disclose affiliations and violated non-disclosures. Those are pure ethics violations (and conflicts of interest) that undermine research integrity. If they're willing to lie there, what else are they willing to lie about?

Quote from another article:

> The reports say that the researchers failed to disclose international collaborators and that at least one confidential grant application was sent to a scientist in China in violation of federal policy, among other allegations. [0]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/health/md-anderson-chines...

Wait, they were fired for showing a grant application to a collaborator? This is something that happens all the time in academia - it's completely normal, regardless of what the rules state (assuming it's their own proposal, which is unclear from the article - as are all these vague accusations). Emory recently fired two tenured Chinese scientists, who are actually quite important in researching Huntington's disease, on similar accusations of hiding their collaborators. The thing is, in the Emory case, the accusations are patently absurd. The collaborators were listed on the papers, and a dean at Emory had approved the collaboration. It looks like the Trump administration is pressuring the NIH, which is pressuring universities, and the people at the bottom are taking the flak.

I can definitely imagine some grant applications with sensitive information in them.

It will only be available to everyone after it's patented and sold to a big pharma. All made possible by the great Bayh–Dole Act - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act

How does it work in the EU? Do they just give away without any patents?

Publicly-funded medical research at EU universities works exactly the same way - they patent it and sell the patents to big pharma.

Imagine getting funding in USA for research and sending the research and results back to China so they can patent it before. Who benefits then?

As opposed to a US spinoff company getting it and keeping all oversea profits offshore in Ireland etc. to avoid taxation?

That "loophole" was closed in 2017 by the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (GILTI/transition tax).

Everyone benefits, because information is now more freely flowing.

I don't care at all about information "theft".

If said research is developed and productized into something that works?

Then we all benefit, cancer victims most notably. Hence the public funding of basic research.

Sure....Chinese government gets the money by selling the medicine without investing in the research. That's cheating. And you really think cancer patients will get benefits without paying for an arm and leg?

Why do you think the US government funds basic research?

Are you under the impression the Chinese don't also fund basic research? Or that it's a quick hop from basic research to a marketable, approved drug?

And why is this all about who profits rather than curing cancer?

They are listed as paid full-time researchers in Chinese institutions. But xenophobia!

A well-known Youtuber called Serpentza recently made a video about how Chinese students don't assimilate into American culture and how it is made difficult for them to assimilate, partly due to overt action from the Chinese government.

For one thing, Chinese culture is quite alien to western culture, and I don't mean that in a judgemental way, just that their spoken, written and body language is so much different that it is automatically harder for them. It doesn't help that they are told by the educational system and state media how great China is and how bad the US.

Also the students going abroad are highly selected. Not only for academic qualities, but students (or their families) who show a lack of loyalty to the state will have a tougher time even obtaining an exit visa. I wouldn't be surprised if cooperation with intelligence services in terms of spying on American universities isn't part of the deal, too.

So because the societies are so different and have limited contact, should we seek to cut off one of the few opportunities young people from borderline enemy countries across the world have to interact, or give them a space to interact freely?

I know most Chinese students at my university kept to their in-group and never interacted with anyone else. I also know loads who found a new culture that they felt comfortable in, made new friends, and started families.

Even if a bunch go home and forget about their time in America, plenty are having life-changing and potentially society-changing experiences.

It's not about societies being different. It's about Chinese international students engaging in blatant plagiarism, refusing to participate in classes, completely refusing to integrate, engaging in pro-chinese anti-local political activism, and basically expanding the CCPs political reach into foreign universities. This is something that all tertiary educators are painful aware of, as is the reluctance of faculty to take disciplinary action against international students because they're a major source of revenue. This is also something that is quite unique to Chinese and not other international students.

The Chinese students who don't subscribe to the CCP agenda are pressured by the others. They get labelled traitors, ostracised, word gets around and their families get harassed back at home.

In a nutshell, the CCP has identified inclusive societies as a soft target for remote propaganda achieved via international students. The CCP is highly selective in deciding who gets to leave the country to study abroad. This is something that couldn't even be discussed until recently because such discussions were/still are labeled as racism.

Stuff like this: http://www.tibetanjournal.com/tibetan-girl-wins-university-e...

If AU/US international students tried to do anything like this in China, they'd be deported in the following few days but not before getting death threats and having their entire family doxxed and harassed.

>unique to Chinese and not other international students.

It’s really not. All wealthy international students are getting passed with As and pats on the back for cheating and doing no real work. It just seems worse with Chinese because they currently make up most of the foreign student base.

And political activism and silencing others on behalf of the CCP is an issue, but I’ve seen disproportionately way more student groups and public complaints in favor of a certain middle eastern country.

I can back that up with a different anecdotal experience not including the Chinese. Many of the students on my course were wealthy Emirati and Saudi students. They were quite open about the fact that most of them paid people to write their dissertations and other assignments for them. It was seen as a symbol of wealth who could get the most qualified person to do their work for them. None of them turned up to lectures though, and they'd all fail or do poorly in their exams - but their assignment scores were enough scrape them through the course. The plagiarism was so unbelievably blatant, but the university wouldn't do anything because the petro-states pay out big and they didn't want to appear to be targeting minorities (from the mouth of one of my lecturers). Can't say it's the same for all universities, but my institution was awful for it,

In my opinion the "targeting minorities" excuse is bullshit.

It's always something else, but that excuse is somehow more palatable. In this particular example I'd assume it's really about the money and the amount of ruckus those students and their well-connected parents will raise. Maybe it's not even that much about the money and more about the giant rectal pain genuinely powerful people with an outsized sense of entitlement can be.

Not related to Academia or Chinese or Emiratis, but the epic feud between Switzerland and the Gaddafi Clan about the treatment of the latters' servants/slaves comes to mind.

>The Chinese students who don't subscribe to the CCP agenda are pressured by the others. They get labelled traitors, ostracised, word gets around and their families get harassed back at home.

This has happened to people I know, for crimes such as going to a Taiwanese owned restaurant, a showing of a Tienanmen documentary and dating local white people.

> It's about Chinese international students engaging in blatant plagiarism, refusing to participate in classes

This is not only blatantly untrue, but insanely racist.

https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/ucla-cheating/

https://www.smh.com.au/national/melbourne-uni-probes-inside-...

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/04/international-stude...

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/exclusive-buying...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dishonesty#Demographi...

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students go abroad to study every year. Some of them cheat. Some of them get caught cheating. Some of those cheating scandals make the news. Guess who also cheats? People of every ethnicity and country.

It is true that test prep is a big deal in China. If there's a test to get into a top university, students are going to study like mad to pass that test. You're portraying that as a bad thing. Maybe it is bad to study to the test, but they're just playing by the rules as they exist - the test determines your chances, so you study as hard as possible for that test. If you want to change that behavior, make the test less important, or make it more creative.

One of the most disgusting smears against Chinese people is that they think cheating is okay. Just like in the West, cheating is looked down upon in China and cheaters are despised. Education is highly prized in China (Confucian ideals and all that), and normal parents and teachers certainly do not accept cheating.

What is also true is that in general, science/math education in Chinese primary/secondary schools is far more rigorous and difficult than it is in American schools. Kids generally learn advanced math at a much younger age in China, and that probably has something to do with the high number of extremely highly qualified engineers and scientists that the Chinese educational system produces.

I don't even see them making the point that Chinese students cheat more than others.

But there seems to be a persistent story of political activism and bullying that is pretty unique, and it seems to stem from organized politics rather than individual action.

It's both true and not racist. It would be racist to attribute that the observed behavior is due to genetic, ethnic or cultural reason.

In my opinion racism is about making value judgements across ethnic lines. First you draw a line along an ethnic distinction (maybe Chinese/Westerners). Second you make value judgement in the form of "one side has higher character". And third, possibly, you apply that value judgement to some other area or act on it.

Without a value judgement there can be no racism. Now, plagiarism is mostly seen as a negative behavior, but I don't get the feeling that the OP wanted to make a point about the Chinese students' character or their virtues.

I did not offer any opinion on what actions to take in that matter, nor do I have one at the moment.

I am generally in favor of international exchanges and people being allowed to go where they think they need to go. I'm not in favor of cheating your hosts.

I've seen the same thing happen with British exchange students in the US, and they basically speak English!

For one thing, Chinese culture is quite alien to western culture, and I don't mean that in a judgmental way, just that their spoken, written and body language is so much different that it is automatically harder for them. It doesn't help that they are told by the educational system and state media how great China is and how bad the US.

This is like me studying in the UK, meeting or bumping into US students. Very loud, aggressive because they cant handle alcohol, very arrogant. It also doesn't help that they are told by their educational system and gov that they are the greatest, the land of the free and can do what ever they please if they 'work' hard for it. Also how the US is the master nation of the world, that they are the world police.

In Europe we generally see more drunken Brits, especially in the typical vacation spots. But I'd never say they have worse character or more prone to drunken bad behavior than others.

It's almost always a selection bias, where a certain type of people is drawn to a certain place.

Funny, I find brits in the USA to be loud and poor at handling their drink. Some of the most self-centered people around. But stereotypes only hurt.

Thankfully I am not British. Both are loud and obnoxious in their own way. Just find people from Europe more tolerable.

> For one thing, Chinese culture is quite alien to western culture, and I don't mean that in a judgemental way, just that their spoken, written and body language is so much different that it is automatically harder for them.

I call BS on that one specific point with a counter-example: Taiwan (regardless of if it is/isn't part of China, it's a majority-Chinese-culture country).

I would agree though that students allowed to study at foreign universities are somewhat selected, in that the CCP forbids travels for 'tendentious' individuals. No doubt they would enjoy having "highly selected" ones, but they're just using basics metrics covering way too many candidates for that to be effective.

Never heard of such thing as exit visa...

When you try to leave China, you're checked against a no-exit list and simply prevented from leaving if you're on it. No reason need be given to you. China currently keeps a number of political hostages this way and prevents undesirable nationals from leaving the country.

Most countries try to prevent undesirables from entering, china allows them to enter and then prevents them from leaving.

https://fox8.com/2019/01/03/us-warns-citizens-traveling-to-c...

Don't all countries have a list of people that aren't allowed to leave because of some criminal investigation?

Not all countries apply that to dissidents. Much fewer apply this to all their relatives and many of their friends.

And Chinese get refused exit visa without there being any criminal investigation.

I don’t know what you are arguing for but let’s have some perspective here. Chinese people have been immigrating to North America for over a hundred years and have been successful despite differences in culture etc. It was more difficult back then too.

I didn't say it's impossible or doesn't happen.

With the Chinese foreign students it just seems to happen a lot less and that seems to be by design.

From a purely self-interested perspective, this is the dumbest thing the US could possibly do. There are talented people who want to leave China and come study and work in the US. We are basically stealing China’s best minds. Now we’re telling them they can’t come and shipping them back? I don’t think we should have conflict with China, but, if you are looking for conflict with China, sending brilliant minds back to them is so stupid that it’s almost unimaginable

Are you seriously saying that the children of the wealthiest families in China are "China's best minds"? Please, show me some evidence for this egregious claim.

There is no such thing as modern Chinese meritocracy.

>Are you seriously saying that the children of the wealthiest families in China are "China's best minds"?

As we've seen with the recent scandals (and we also knew before), the wealthiest American attendees are hardly America's best minds either.

Don't think this is a problem that only applies to foreign students. If you want to remove wealth advantages for top tier universities I'm all for it, but it's a bad club to use in this debate.

Don't presume a few exceptions in America meritocracy (who drastically overpaid and had to jump through tons of hoops to cheat the system) compare to what is the norm internationally.

The article discusses effects on doctoral students, not masters or undergrads. STEM PhD programs at top schools are a lot less pay-to-play.

>Are you seriously saying that the children of the wealthiest families in China are "China's best minds"? Please, show me some evidence for this egregious claim.

I've been in programming and systems administration my whole working life, and I've been working in departments that are about half foreign born for most of that time. It's always a kinda weird cultural clash at first, as I look and sound, uh, a little bit midwestern; I've never left the country, and I have zero formal education and come from a family I'd call middle class (outside the bay area middle class) And then you get these very cosmopolitan foreign born people who almost always have advanced degrees working alongside me.

My impression is pretty different from yours. My impression is that, yeah, a lot of these people were raised rich and powerful by the standards of where they came from, and many have the social defects you see in Americans who had serving staff as children. But... generally speaking? they meet or exceed the same technical standards everyone else does for the job. I mean, interviewing is hard, and sometimes they get one that isn't any good, but that's true of all people of all national origins. interviewing is hard, and you make mistakes in both directions, and have to correct later.

Now, I didn't go to school; I don't know if those that aren't any good get failed out in school, or if they don't pass the interview... but I will stand by my statement that if you put in the effort to understand the accents, these foreign students aren't worse than US born candidates. And even if we're just talking about communication, foreign born people I've worked with who were educated at US schools all wrote better than the average US-born person in the same role. I assume that was something the US schools either filtered on or taught well.

I'm just saying; my experience is that these people, one way or another, got themselves some serious education and passed a fairly high intelligence bar, too. There's no way that these are China's minds with the most potential, but they might be among China's best educated minds, and that ain't nothin'

(As an aside, I certainly agree that you overlook a lot of good people if the first step in your filtering process is "has wealthy parents." both China and the US has serious problems with wasting good minds that happen to be born to parents who aren't wealthy. That this has been true for all of history doesn't excuse the truth.)

>There is no such thing as modern Chinese meritocracy.

Is closer to then original coinage than you might think. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/792606.The_Rise_of_the_M...

Important to distinguish between undergrad and graduate here. The "rich kids from China" phenomenon is mainly about undergraduates doing 4-year degrees. This article suggests that Trump wants to crack down on Chinese graduate students, where admission is much more merit based. If true, this is a terrible idea.

Fair enough, good point.

It's not like the situation in the US is that different [0], but apparently these days people have very short memories.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_briber...

Neither is there an American one.

Wealthy Americans can and have bought their way into Harvard, Stanford et. al. left and right.

So, this is anecdotal... but I worked for 5.5 years at a top American tech company, don't want to name names here. But about 50% of our data scientists were Chinese grad students taken after they finished their Masters or PhDs.

You can say what you like about "best minds" but I can assure you there are some seriously talented Chinese youth coming to the US for grad school and then ending up at top American companies and working jobs where high intelligence and ability is required. I was friends with many of said graduate students and many of them expressed fear and sadness about the Trump Visa situation and none of them wanted to go back to China.

You're absolutely right. China is desperately fighting brain drain and here we are giving them a helping hand.

Almost makes me wonder if it's deliberate, as in some quid pro quo agreed upon, implied, or otherwise, between the US and Chinese presidents. Though what the US gets out of it is unclear, I wouldn't be shocked.

Trump wants people to stop buying services from AT&T, as of yesterday;

>"I believe that if people stoped[sic] using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN, which is dying in the ratings anyway. It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News! Why wouldn’t they act. When the World watches @CNN, it gets a false picture of USA. Sad!"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2019

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11354990026261544...

What the US gets out of that is also unclear.

I guess you could just take at face value this proposition by the US President that boycotting AT&T to enforce large changes in the editorial policy of CNN is something that is good for the US. But I think that you would also have to be very careful not to think about it very hard.

> What the US gets out of that is also unclear.

It gets the media landscape in-line with the administration: "Don't you dare to report badly about me or I will make you pay for it.", at least it attempts to.

The question, is these bright minds never spent 10 years at MIT or Harvard, and instead spent it at Peking University, would be they be of the same caliber?

As someone who went to the number one school in a 3rd world country and one the top universities in the US, I'd say those people would be of the same or better technical or academic caliber. Although they will most definitely not have the same connections or opportunities afterwards (which is where the most value at elite schools is).

It's harder to get into the top university in China than at MIT and Harvard. To think otherwise suggests a myopic view of the world.

Corollary: it's more prestigious to have done your bachelor's education at Tsinghua University than at MIT or Harvard. The top students in China do their Bachelor's degree in China. The ones who don't get into the top universities and have money are sent overseas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsinghua_University

Tsinghua in Beijing is one of the world's foremost universities. A ton of Chinese leaders and also two Nobel laureates come from there.

Not that it isn't a good university, I mean I hear decent things, but two Nobel laureates is really not that much for a top university. Many local European universities have more.

How is it not a good university? Is it solely measured on Nobel Laureates?

Read again.

Probably not. However, does it matter? If we take some of the best and brightest from China and make them even better, why would it matter if they'd otherwise be still some of China's best and brightest but less well trained? Regardless the US wins and China loses very talented people.

Probably not? Sounds like someone hasn’t mingled with other countries elites. Yikes. If I’m allowed to sterotype, I’d get the russian math major and the American business major for sales, a Swedish HR and some Polish coders.

> does it matter?

It matters if they return to China with their American education and:

-engage in nation-state attacks on behalf of the PLA [1], or

-build facial-recognition software to further repress the Uyghur community [2], or

-contribute to the "social credit" system which makes it next-to-impossible for everyday Chinese to express anything other than unvarnished support of the ruling party [3], or

-eavesdrop on advocates for democracy in Hong Kong [4], or

-build advanced weapons systems that are then installed on newly-constructed islands in the South China Sea [5], or

-conduct industrial espionage on behalf of Chinese companies with key government contacts or PLA-connected C-level execs [6], or

-participate in advanced research projects like quantum satellites which could give China a persistent strategic advantage against the NSA [7], or

-install facial recognition technology in primary-school and middle-school classrooms to enhance indoctrination methods at an earlier age [8], or

-any other number of future scenarios we haven't even discussed.

I'm not saying every overseas Chinese student fits this description. While living in Shanghai for almost 6 years, I encountered quite a few that were open to democratic ideals and skeptical of their government's propaganda. However, there is also a non-trivial amount of nationalism among everyday Chinese, and the CCP is capable of directing it against the US anytime it sees fit, through its monopoly of mainland media outlets (and increasingly, non-mainland ones as well) [9].

I don't pretend to have a solution to this problem. But I think it may be short-sighted to expect Chinese students to be wooed by the wonders of democracy after a short-term study-abroad program in a country whose democracy is flawed at best.

------------

Sources:

[1] https://www.cbronline.com/what-is/what-is-pla-unit-61398-and...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/apr/11/china-hi-tech-w...

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-p...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_China#Hon...

[5] https://futurism.com/the-byte/australia-chinese-lasers-milit...

[6] https://www.globaldots.com/chinese-spying-chips-found-hidden...

[7] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/china-s-quantum-sate...

[8] https://www.businessinsider.com/china-school-facial-recognit...

[9] https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-reports/speak-no-evi...

Every one of your scenarios has an American analog. You're basically reading off the script of the two minutes hate.

Not sure what “two minutes hate” refers to, but whether there is an American analog or not is irrelevant. Or at least, it’s irrelevant from the perspective of the American foreign policy officials who craft the student visa rules which we’re discussing.

>"Not sure what “two minutes hate” refers to"

When discussing foreign policy officials and visa rules, Orwell is probably going to come up fairly regularly as a common point of reference. Is from the book 1984.

> Not sure what “two minutes hate” refers to

1984

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

What’s the American analog of the social credit system?

Secretive terrorist watch lists managed by ML [0]

For a more overt manifestation, just take a look at how the US treats ex-convicts: Public shaming by releasing mug-shots, some states even revoking their right to vote among other rights, de-facto turning them into second-grade citizens for life.

[0] https://theintercept.com/2018/12/03/air-travel-surveillance-...

Thanks to the HN readers who defined "two minutes hate".

I think some readers of my original comment may be misunderstanding it. To clarify, I am happy to go into an equal level of detail about the many ills of American hegemony:

-False claims about WMD as a pretext for war against Iraq, resulting in an estimated 460,000 deaths [1]

-Four centuries of slave trade, which forced millions of people into bondage, resulted in a number of deaths ranging from 1.5 million to 5 million people, tore countless families apart, and continues to have socioeconomic consequences to this day, both in America and Africa. [2]

-The dropping of atomic bombs on Japan during WWII, which indiscriminately targeted civilians and killed 90,000–146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000–80,000 people in Nagasaki. [3]

-Countless examples of backing authoritarian rulers friendly to US interests and engaging in "regime change", including the 1953 Iran coup [4], Fulgencio Basista in Cuba [5], and currently supporting 73% of regimes classified as "dictatorships" by Freedom House. [6]

-The idea of "manifest destiny" [7] as a justification to lay claim to territory that was already occupied, resulting in the deaths of 80-98% of native peoples as the result of diseases like smallpox, as well as outright genocide. [8]

-American involvement in the Vietnam War, which killed between 1-4 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. [9]

-Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and so-called "black sites", where non-US citizens are held without trial and subject to human rights abuses. [10]

-Mass surveillance conducted by the US government, including on its own people, resulting in an unknowable number of civil liberties violations. [11]

I mention all of the above in order to (hopefully) establish the fact that I am not simply "reading off the script of the two minutes hate." Or if I am, at least I'm reading off both sides' scripts.

That said, my original point still stands. I obviously have no data on the percentage of visa applicants who plan to use their education for ill vs good. In fact, I'm even willing to stipulate that the vast majority of those applicants fall into the more well-intentioned category. However, _if_ (and this is a big if) the intention of a student visa applicant is to commit acts which (hopefully) we can all agree are antithetical to basic human rights, and _if_ an American education would make them relatively more effective at doing so, then we all have an interest in stopping them from succeeding. That is true regardless of whether they do so on behalf of the CCP, the US government, a private corporation, etc. And importantly, whether there are American analogues to China's actions has no bearing on this point. It's pure whatabout-ism, and is a distraction from the point at hand.

I'm emphatically _not_ advocating for the repeal of student visas for Chinese applicants (I personally think this is a bad idea overall). I'm simply responding to another reader's question, "does it matter (if visa applicants study in the US or elsewhere)?". The point I'm making is that it might matter very much, and that exposure to or immersion in American democracy is not a panacea, especially when that democracy has significant and chronic ills which prevent it from reaching its full potential.

---------

Sources

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

2) https://www.un.org/en/events/africandescentdecade/slave-trad...

https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/mar/18...

3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...

4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh

5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista

6) https://truthout.org/articles/us-provides-military-assistanc...

7) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

8) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples...

9) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_of_the_United_States_in_t...

10) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/oct/...

11) https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-su...

This doesn't seem true, can you provide examples?

Or if the US values are really better the students would bring their home, I am not sure how this phenomena is called but about 300 years ago when wealthy students from Romania went to study in France and return caused a big cultural improvement.

This tactic could sorta make sense – if narrowly directed at "princelings" who are children of top officials, rather than top students we'd love to have stay in the US. (I don't have much hope clumsy trade/immigration bureaucracies & grandstanding politicians can be that subtle, though.)

All this anti-China activity almost reminds me of the "yellow peril" at the turn of the last century...

There's enough mutual affinity, interchange, & commerce that this current political/trade spat hasn't had much of a racial character, in its rhetoric or reasoning, as far as I've seen.

I would agree except that it's one hundred years later and there are Uighur re-education camps and social credit scores and new islands in the South China Sea with missile platforms and statements about reconquering Taiwan and... well.

And the USS Maine definitely did sink in a Cuban port.

Like some comments pointed out, targeting on talent will be ineffective, if not backfiring. And just like most typical dumb policies, it's targeting on symptoms (students not integrating or researchers leaving) not real causes and issues in this country: race, economic and fake news.

The racial problems and slow economic in US is making international students less motivated to stay in US, and particularly when it comes to Chinese students, they have an easy fallback option.

The propaganda and fake news is making it worse. While on one side nationalism propaganda is flowing in from the China (particularly on WeChat and Zhihu), on the other side fake news targeting on Chinese students and broadly minorities/foreigners are pushing them further away.

In the past, US administrations have made some really smart decisions like helped establish one of best universities in China[1], and generously welcomed the Chinese student from Tiananmen Protest in 1989[2].

This administration is fond of self-claimed wars, targeting students and researchers is a war easy to win, even much easier than the trade war, but we all know history which tells us where it leads to.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsinghua_University#Early_20th...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Student_Protection_Act...

(with a terrible russian accent) USA can be the opened center of the free world or it can be the closed and most powerful contry in the world. If USA uses its position as the opened center of free world to become closed contry that rules the world, we all will have a hard time.

The original idea is to let the idea flow. Given the greatness of freedom, Democrat and human rights they would ... not in real life. Even down to have top scientists who do human baby experiment.

May be if one can go two ways at least both can learn the good and bad in both cultures. But no. Like one dudes trade it is free trade to the world but how many can research freely in china.

Good luck. Finally wake up. It is sad that the dream of good coin can drive out bad coin not working. Instead the coin just come, and still bad coin.

Still wonder why Soviet Union or Russia is not allowed by and large do that. But china can. It is a wonder of the 20th century - only found out in the 21st.

There is the story which isn't new that China is using some students as spies. A long game where students end up staying in the USA after graduating and getting jobs in Industries where they pass information back to HQ/China.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/25/china-uses-...

A senior U.S. counterintelligence official recently said publicly what many officials and experts have been warning privately for years: China is using its large student population in the United States to spy.

Elite universities have been more than complicit in this as well, especially when they can charge such a premium on "international student" tuition. It is also why they so often look the other way when those students bring their cultural values on things like cheating with them. No one dares admit it for fear of being labeled racist or xenophobic.

"when those students bring their cultural values on things like cheating with them" - geez, I wonder why international students find it hard to assimilate.

Can't speak for the US but this is certainly the case in Australian Universities, I've had interns that don't speak enough English to order a hamburger yet somehow got masters degrees. Cheating is rampant and the Universities will look the other way, even threaten teachers that fail students. The industry has the legitimacy of a pyramid scheme and deserves to be shut down.

While they're here many students will also work more than the allowed 25 hours a week (meant for industry experience not ubereats) and for below minimum wage, which has a huge affect on the job market for younger people.

Just to be clear, this doesn't necessarily mean that the students got the degree through fraud or low standards.

Speaking and listening can be harder than reading and writing, so the students might be doing good work even if their spoken language isn't very good. Also in technical subjects you might not need to know the language well to pass the tests and do the homeworks.

As an example, I have an Msc from a French language university, but I can't really understand the language.

> Just to be clear, this doesn't necessarily mean that the students got the degree through fraud or low standards.

From what I understand of the process there are meant to be English literacy tests for ESL students and I think most of them have a spoken component. It's not necessarily the students (some or even most of them would be the victims) but someone in the system certainly is certainly fraudulent.

As for technical competency of the ones I've worked with in the intern program, they're lucky we didn't get to select them because they wouldn't have passed the most basic coding test (simpler than fizzbuzz) in any language. It was much more than the practical vs theoretical divide too, as far as I could tell they were completely bereft of theoretical knowledge, even the basics of their masters specialties.

This is probably warranted.

I disagree with you, but am curious about your argument. Wouldn’t this cut off the brain drain that’s contributed to decades of American technological supremacy and economic growth?

No.

Are you trying to credit Chinese students as the sole reason for America's technological supremacy and economic growth? Ha ha good try but no.

Besides, India isn't affected by this and they make up equal share of foreign students in American Universities.

Plus, you know, western European students, African students, Russian, etc, have also contributed over the decades.

China isn't everything.

> Are you trying to credit Chinese students as the sole reason for America's technological supremacy and economic growth?

No, but more is more. The carrot is the cream of a billion people tasting American culture and having the opportunity to contribute to it. I’m just trying to see the counterbalancing, and un-mitigatable, cost or risk.

Elite Chinese talent is more likely to return to China, and therefore it becomes counter-productive. Plus, the US is in direct competition with China, which isn't the case with most other countries. So, to simply say "more is more" in this circumstance is false.

It's hardly a tragedy that rich kids in China can't attend Ivy League schools in the US.

In 2013, the number of Chinese students returning to China after graduating hit 90%. [1]

It used to be more like 9 in 10 would remain in the US to work.

If foreign graduate students are staying and working in the US, it’s probably a net benefit hosting them in US schools, even though it drives up demand and therefore tuition costs for US citizens.

If 8 or 9 out of 10 are returning to China, better to keep the spot for someone who will work in the US.

Now it’s probably government policy that’s the main driver for so many Chinese foreign exchange students to return to China (both US and China policies align in this sense), but it’s not like Trump is going to open up work visas for graduating Chinese students, so in that reality it makes sense to tighten the student visa issuance to account.

With 360,000 Chinese foreign exchange students, and I’m willing to bet that’s disproportionately private universities (5 million total enrollment) rather than public. I wonder what the elasticity of demand is for college these days, and how much of a tuition price drop that could entail?

Unfortunately my personal experience is there is very little integration on campus between foreign exchange and domestic populations, which precludes even the cultural benefit. Colleges claim they cultivate a rich/diverse environment but in reality the students largely exist within their own circle. It may be different at the graduate level, where ~25% of enrollment is foreign. I recall a NYT article last year about it, but I can’t find it presently.

[1] - https://qz.com/1342525/chinese-students-increasingly-return-...

Most students returned to China because they are not allowed to work in the US. The chance of getting a work visa dropped significantly since 2010s.

Foreign students aren’t getting American education for free; they pay much higher tuition. They are effectively subsiding the tuition cost of domestic students.

I know the international tuition is much higher. But economics dictate the university cannot increase prices when it finds itself with empty slots they need to fill.

Universities will take a large financial hit, but tuition should also decline in the face of lower demand.

Not really. Most Chinese PhD students have full assistantship.

Most Chinese undergraduate students won't be able to get job in the US anyway.

Your second and first paragraphs are talking about different things.

I think people has to recognise there are two class of student; children from bourgeois class that mainly come to US just for their Bachelor, most of them don’t stay in the US afterward; Postgraduate student from the newly formed middle class in China that, if given chance, mostly won’t return to China.

I find this line of thinking so odd, because nobody ever says “exporting American {cars/corn/computers} to China drives up demand and costs to US citizens.” The worst-case scenario here is that education is economically just equivalent to an export, but that’s still a pretty great scenario! Especially since it’s an export that doesn’t pollute, supports high-paying labor, perpetuates the global premium associated with a US education, and has the side effect that sometimes foreign students do stay and continue to contribute to the economy.

But it’s not anything like exporting a consumable product.

It’s exporting expertise which is used to outcompete the US and eliminates US jobs and challenges profitability of US companies.

It’s obviously not without benefits in terms of establishing clout of US universities (and maybe even keeping many of those programs running) and for the people that do stay those are bright and productive immigrants which are going to go on to create value and jobs in the US economy.

The problem is when almost all of the students aren’t remaining to work in the US and the ones that do, you worry if they aren’t involved in some form of espionage for the Motherland.

Well, except there’s a finite amount of educational slots, and so fewer people who would keep that education and knowledge in the US are able to get in.

I don’t see how it’s different. The instantaneous production limit of cars/corn/computers is also fixed, but can be increased with demand. There is a notorious shortage of jobs for new PhDs[1], so it’s not like labor is a limiting factor.

[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/04/new-data-show...

What keeps institutions from increasing the number of spots to meet demand, much like car manufacturers?

They tried, turns out good education is hard to scale.

What do you recommend the EU should do with all the US students that come here to study for basically free, because they can't afford it back home?

We have like 5000 Americans studying in Germany alone. Do you think we should send them back home because they're not gonna work here anyways?

Do you not believe someone should give those young people an education just because they deserve a chance in life?

Can we not do things on principle sometimes instead of having to justify everything with economics?

Don’t non-EU students have to pay tuition fees? If not, they certainly should.

No I don’t think an expensive university education is a “right” that these young people should be given for a chance in life.

There are copious cheap public options for someone who is looking to build a marketable skill, and I think those options are already highly subsidized.

But more to the point, I don’t think hosting 350k Chinese foreign students in US universities where 90% of them will return to China to compete against American companies and American jobs is something that the US should be doing on principle.

> Don’t non-EU students have to pay tuition fees? If not, they certainly should.

They pay "nothing" just like every other student in Germany. Nothing here means "less than 500 bucks of (administrative) fees / year". The added benefits that you get with being a student (for instance free public transport) generally already outweigh that fee though.

> No I don’t think an expensive university education is a “right” that these young people should be given for a chance in life.

Education is actually a recognized human right under the "International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights" treaty. Exactly 169 Countries have signed and ratified the treaty, but the US are not one of them (signed but not ratified).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_education

Because I believe in that right myself, I'll gladly pay for the education of every US American university student (and others) in Germany with my taxes until the US steps up its game. Curiously I'm paying for my own education that way too.

> I don’t think hosting 350k Chinese foreign students in US universities where 90% of them will return to China to compete against American companies and American jobs is something that the US should be doing on principle.

In total there are almost 400,000 international students enrolled in Germany. For free.

> It may be different at the graduate level, where ~25% of enrollment is foreign.

Only 25%? If you look at science and engineering graduate programs, its probably closer to 90%. Or its certainly felt like that around every department I've seen.

You’re right, it’s overwhelmingly foreign students in STEM. I guess non-STEM balances it out?

The reason more Chinese students returned was because the number of Chinese going to the USA to study exploded. It is really hard for those liberal arts fuerdai to find a job in the states after they graduate.

Chinese student and liberal art subject??

Chinese students from rich powerful families studying liberal arts rather than STEM majors.

Who could blame them? The US is an inhospitable place for immigrants. People won't give them a chance to assimilate. They'll be suspicious of them from the start (like some of the comments here), they give them a hard-time if they don't assimilate right away and won't go half-way to be friends with them.

Compared to where? China? India? I think immigrants assimilate just fine into the United States. Assimilation is not easy anywhere. The United States isn't perfect, but plenty of immigrants are living great lives.

Do we know the fraction who were given a long-term visa but returned anyway? Trying to disentangle the difficulty of graduates getting visas from graduates who are just coming here to go home afterwards.

Uh oh, I see a lot of Chinese names on academic papers describing breakthrough research.

It would be nice if we could add some human rights issues to Trump’s list of grievances. I feel like coverage of what’s going on would feel entirely different if part of it was saying “stop running concentration camps”

Edit: curious why the downvotes

I'm going to venture a guess as perhaps there's some hypocrisy on the US being the moral authority on human rights... yes I realize that we don't currently run concentration camps, but we did not that long ago (see Japanese internment camps), or the more recent black sites where prisoners are tortured... or funding friendly dictators with death squads... etc.

I'm definitely a critic of China's awful stance on human rights, but would Trump taking a stance against China's despotic government on humanitarian grounds seem the least bit credible when that seems to be the de-facto justification du jour for foreign regime change? Assad barrel bombs, Iran nuclear this that, Gaddafi something something... I've long since stopped giving the ( unilateral ) American government the benefit of doubt when they complain about other counties' treatment of their citizens. At least this time they're being remotely honest.

At least to me, your comment reads like you wish Trump would act more like Hitler so you could feel more justified in not liking him.

Edit: See reply below. I realize now that this was me misinterpreting the parent's words.

Caring more about human rights abuses is to "act more like Hitler" Sheesh..

Perhaps I misread the comment, which is probably what other people did as well then.

I believe based on your comment, the intended statement was "I wish Trump would make a bigger deal out of China's human rights abuses." Which does seem pretty reasonable.

Given the general pattern of comments on the internet where everything about Trump is negative, I read it as "I wish Trump would have some human rights abuses added to his list of things that are wrong with him"

As I said, sounds like that is my mistake. I am guessing others may have read it that way as well.

Buttercup’s comment is a sweet little Rorschach test.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com