Stephen Miller Pushed Ending Chinese Student Visas

@jzducol Are the numbers you cite for Chinese undergrads, grad students, or both? Wouldn’t most PhD candidate students be in funded programs, or at least the STEM PhD students?

I would guess that there are far more Chinese national grad students than undergrads, but am not sure of that.

https://m.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2119903/chinese-students-still-drawn-us-universities-growth-rate-slowing says that of about 351k students from China in US colleges and universities in 2016-2017, 143k were undergraduates, 128k were graduates, and 80k were nondegree students. Note: the article also mentions that there are about 1 million total international students in the US.

That article and https://www.asiasentinel.com/society/chinese-students-find-usa-hostile-place-study/ also suggest that “soft power” in terms of favorable image of the US is declining (different reasons given in each article).

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/chinese-students-increasingly-scared-about-us-study

That^ article requires a registration, @1NJParent. Any other way to link to it?

@jym626 I don’t see a way around the registration issue. Here’s the article:

MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Deleted article above. Excessive quoting violates our ToS.

U. of Virginia is one of the few public universities that provides large amounts of need based aid to US out of state students. The main reason they can afford to do that is because they have so many full pay international students (who are mainly from China, S. Korea and India). Those international students are not eligible for financial aid from U.Va.

In any case, I don’t think it is the undergrads who are committing the espionage and the intellectual property theft.

Certainly changes the equation. One thing that probably wasn’t considered is many of those educated in the US, return to China. IF they learn about the American systems ( business, government, diplomacy etc) it makes international relations between the nations easier. You just never know if someone educated at Harvard or MIT becomes President one day. IT happened to Netanyahu of Israel (sp?) who went to MIT. It also forces the US to consider how to best educate American citizens to do the jobs of the future. My other thoughts are too political to write about in this forum.

UIUC is called “University of Indians & University of Chinese” by many for a reason.

It used to be that most Chinese who came here for education would want to work in the US and then acquire green cards/citizenship. Many of them are successful in a wide variety of the STEM fields, one major group of the so-called “model minirities”; their offsprings are the “tiger cubs” who have excellent stats and are competing with each other to get into elite colleges/universities. Just look at any of the top 20 medical schools to see how many East Asians (esp. Chinese/Chinese Americans are in each incoming class).

Now, with tightening of working visas and better opportunities in China, more Chinese students have been/are planning to go back to China.

With the souring of US-China relationship, Universities in Australia, Canada, Britain, and other non-English speaking western European countries have seen increased Chinese applicants. One country’s loss is other countries’ gain.

Thinking that most chinese students coming to the US are mainly from Chinese officials really did not understand/know about China’s economic progress over the past 20 years. Chinese students are coming to US even at elementary/middle school level, there are many Chinese students in private high schools all over US (and UK). Many of them are just from the newly minted Chinese white-collar middle class families, who have good-paying jobs and even better appreciating properties.

My kids’ high school had international students, mostly from China and Korea. It was not a boarding school.There were about 25-40 per year, and they lived in family homes or group homes. Some spoke excellent English, but others did not.

DS19’s high school is predominantly East Asian (mostly Chinese and Indian) and Middle Eastern, but they aren’t international students. Many were born here but just as many are recent immigrants. The parents don’t send their kids to schools in foreign lands, they emigrate.

This was an interesting article about Chinese students coming to America for the high school experience. It was pretty sad, I thought: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/magazine/the-parachute-generation.html Kids weren’t really getting integrated into the schools or community.

Am I the only one that sees this as an attempt to stop China’s rise? I am sure Miller would not mind Chinese students going to the US to study humanities and social sciences.

Since Miller is mostly known for hardline anti-immigration views (particularly against non-white immigration), it is likely that the most obvious motivation (reducing non-white immigration) is the primary one.

@Canuckguy If it is an attempt to “stop china’s rise” it’s a pretty lame approach. China is invested in locations that we tend to ignore – such as Africa – and they’ve been doing it since the early 1980s – acting as the superpower there, building infrastructure, locking down the rare minerals, etc. China doesn’t need us to “rise”.

Why China and not the Middle East? Not sure I’m buying the reasoning.

@sylvan8798: because most students from the Middle East come from Saudi Arabia. I’m sure the reasoning makes more sense now.

Most Chinese undergraduates at elite colleges, as mentioned above, actually study the humanities and social sciences. It’s not about STEM v. Humanities/Social Science.

I’m sure if the “Chinese student ban” were considered constitutional, there might be other student ban attempts. However, there’d be big issues, no matter what Stephen Miller pushed: the most represented countries are India, South Korea, Canada, and Saudi Arabia. India has got intense lobbying with plenty of money flowing and it’s a cultivated ally so it’d be harder to push than China; South Korea, well, with the negotiating involving the Koreas, anything involving South Korean students would be off limits; Canadians are presumed white (…I know, but, it’s just like Norwegians…) - non-White Canadians can’t be barred from student visas on skin color or ethnicity grounds, so even Stephen Miller knows better than to try shenanigans on non White Canadians; and The Kingdom of Saud, well, is off limits too. There’s already a ban on Iran students (more or less, let’s not get legalistic). Maybe, maybe some people would get excited about a ban on students from Vietnam and Taiwan, but I just don’t see it.
So, why not other countries? Because it is almost impossible to justify or use or see as something else than shooting yourself in the foot.

I see no real reluctance to avoid shooting oneself in the foot. As a move to punish other countries, however, some things would have broader consequences than others.

Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and UK can absorb them all.

Or they can just buy US colleges https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/10/15/chinese-companies-seek-buy-american-campuses?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=a2aaa11b44-DNU20181015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-a2aaa11b44-228265881