Rubio's move to revoke Chinese students visas sparks condemnation

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The U.S. will "aggressively" revoke visas from Chinese students and enhance scrutiny for future applicants, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The U.S. says it is going to aggressively revoke visas of Chinese students and researchers in the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says those with connections to China's ruling Communist Party or those who study in what he termed critical fields could see their visas terminated. NPR's Emily Feng is here in the studio to help us understand what this could mean. Hey, Emily.

EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.

SHAPIRO: Let's start with the language Secretary Rubio used. Do you know what counts as a substantial connection to the Communist Party or what the U.S. considers a critical field that might lead a student's visa to be revoked?

FENG: No, and these are quite vague. Depending on how broadly these terms are defined, it could impact nearly all of the 280,000 or so Chinese and Hong Kong students who are in the U.S. They range from people who are studying at the high school level to postdoctoral researchers. And Trump's team has been trying for a while, actually, to stop Chinese students from coming to the U.S. And the argument that they make is one of national security - that the students in China are a risk because they could ultimately use their American education in the U.S. to strengthen China. And this is not the first time they've tried to control the numbers coming here. Back during his first term, Trump's team reportedly was even mulling a blanket ban on Chinese students, though they didn't go through with that.

SHAPIRO: Is there evidence that these nearly 300,000 people may be a national security threat to the U.S.?

FENG: So this is what we know. We know China does have a track record of stealing intellectual property from the U.S. We know they try to poach American talent. But the U.S. already screens Chinese students for any military and intelligence links, and the overwhelming consensus among people who study U.S.-China tech competition that I've been speaking to has been that the benefits of attracting these Chinese-born researchers and students far outweighs the risks.

One of these people is Cole McFaul. He's a research analyst at CSET - this is a research organization at Georgetown University. And he points out U.S. tech innovation has really drawn from Chinese talent who come to the U.S. and they stay in the U.S.

COLE MCFAUL: And that's a really important force multiplier for the United States. I see that as America's No. 1 advantage in our kind of tech competition with China. That's something that China is not able to do, right?

FENG: As in, they're not able to attract foreign talent like the U.S. The vast majority of Chinese students after they graduate stay in the U.S., working at U.S. companies, becoming professors at U.S. universities, according to CSET. And so the U.S. gets to retain that talent, McFaul argues, rather than China.

SHAPIRO: What are you hearing today from students and from universities about the impact this could have?

FENG: It is having a huge ripple effect. People are extremely fearful, and that's because so much of our basic scientific research, mostly at universities, relies on work from graduate and postdoc students. Universities need more and more of these researchers and a lot of them come from China. So American higher education has been hit already by billions of dollars in federal research funding that's been cut, and now, potentially, they're going to lose a good chunk of their research talent, too.

And for the U.S., there's a longer-term implication as a top-tier country for education. You know, American higher education has long been revered - like, utterly venerated in China - even when bilateral relations were fraught. And education is a huge source of American soft power, but that soft power is perhaps not as attractive as before. I spoke to Yingyi Ma about this. She's a sociology professor at Syracuse University. And she says more restrictive immigration policies, China's own universities, which are becoming stronger, means fewer Chinese students want to come to the U.S. now.

YINGYI MA: Really best and brightest - those kinds of students, I would guarantee you, would not really study abroad these days. They would just stay in China.

FENG: Education industry groups calculate that American soft power actually creates billions of dollars a year in revenue for universities, jobs, research patents. And all of that is because of international students, including those from China, who have been coming to the U.S.

SHAPIRO: NPR's Emily Feng, thank you.

FENG: Thanks, Ari.

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