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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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