Hong Kong
CNN
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The Trump administration’s transfer to bar Harvard University from enrolling international students has ricocheted throughout China, with officers and commentators seeing it via one lens: the rising rivalry between Washington and Beijing.
“China has persistently opposed the politicization of academic collaboration,” a spokesperson for China’s International Ministry mentioned Friday, including that the US transfer “will solely tarnish its personal picture and fame on this planet.”
Some commentators throughout Chinese language social media platforms took the same tack: “It’s enjoyable to look at them destroy their very own power,” learn one touch upon the X-like platform Weibo that garnered lots of of likes.
“Trump involves the rescue once more,” wrote one other, commenting on a hashtag in regards to the information, which has tens of hundreds of thousands of views. “Recruiting worldwide college students is … the primary approach to appeal to prime expertise! After this street is lower off, will Harvard nonetheless be the identical Harvard?”
The announcement by the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) is a transparent escalation of a dispute between the oldest and the richest Ivy League establishment and the White Home and a part of a broader drive to tighten management over international students within the US amid an immigration crackdown. The administration of US President Donald Trump has revoked hundreds of student visas in almost each nook of the nation as a part of an unlimited immigration crackdown.
Harvard and Trump’s administration have been locked in conflict for months because the administration demanded the college make modifications to campus operations. The federal government has homed in on overseas college students and workers it believes participated in contentious campus protests over the Israel-Hamas warfare.
However the revocation isn’t nearly a feud between a college and the US president. It’s additionally the most recent in a widening rupture between two superpowers.
For years, China despatched extra worldwide college students to America than another nation. These deep academic ties are being reshaped by a rising geopolitical rivalry that has fueled an ongoing trade and tech war.
“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese language Communist Celebration on its campus,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem mentioned in a press release Thursday.
The DHS statement included claims of ties between Harvard and Chinese language establishments or people linked to military-related analysis, in addition to with an entity blacklisted by the Trump administration for alleged human rights violations. It hyperlinks to information a couple of letter that bipartisan US lawmakers despatched earlier this week to Harvard requesting details about the college’s alleged “partnerships with overseas adversaries.”
Harvard has not replied to a CNN request for touch upon the alleged partnerships. In a press release on its web site, the college mentioned it was “dedicated to sustaining our potential to host our worldwide college students and students, who hail from greater than 140 nations and enrich the College and this nation.”
The flexibility of elite American universities to recruit prime college students from world wide, lots of whom usually go on to remain in the US, has lengthy been seen as a important consider America’s science and tech prowess, in addition to a key supply of revenue for its universities.
The choice by the DHS each bars Harvard from enrolling worldwide college students for the approaching tutorial yr and requires present overseas college students to switch to a different college to take care of their standing.
Worldwide college students make up greater than 1 / 4 of Harvard’s pupil physique, with these hailing from China making up the most important worldwide group, in line with a tally on Harvard’s Worldwide Workplace web site.
Amongst these college students is Fangzhou Jiang, 30, a pupil at Harvard’s Kennedy Faculty, who mentioned he couldn’t imagine it when he heard that his college standing was in jeopardy and instantly started to fret if his visa was nonetheless legitimate.
“I used to be completely shocked for fairly a couple of minutes. I simply by no means anticipated that the administration may go this far,” mentioned Jiang, who can be the founding father of an training consulting firm serving to overseas college students acquire admission to elite American universities. “Ever since I used to be younger, on the subject of the very best universities on this planet, from a younger age, I realized that it’s Harvard,” he mentioned.
Ivy League faculties like Harvard, Princeton and Yale are family names in center class China, the place American universities have for years been seen as a path to a prestigious training and a leg-up in China’s fiercely aggressive career-ladder.
China was the highest supply of worldwide college students within the US for 15 straight years since 2009, earlier than it was surpassed by India simply final yr, in line with figures from Open Doorways, a US Division of State-backed database monitoring worldwide pupil enrollment.
Alongside the way in which, US-China academic ties have cultivated shut relationships between Chinese language and American teachers and establishments, whereas US universities and trade are broadly seen to have benefited from their potential to draw prime expertise from China, and elsewhere, to their halls.
Harvard has educated Chinese language figures like former Vice Premier Liu He, who performed a key function negotiating Trump’s section one commerce deal in the course of the American president’s first time period.
However these ties have come underneath growing scrutiny lately because the US started to see an more and more assertive and highly effective China as a technological rival and a menace to its personal superpower standing.
Greater than 277,000 Chinese language college students studied within the US in the course of the 2023 to 2024 tutorial yr, down from over 372,000 within the peak 2019-2020 yr – a decline that coincides with the Covid-19 pandemic but additionally growing friction between the 2 governments.
In the meantime, rising nationalist sentiment and authorities emphasis on nationwide safety in China have led to a shift in notion in regards to the worth of American versus Chinese language universities.
The Division of Homeland Safety’s claims relating to Harvard’s institutional ties to entities and people with ties to military-related analysis are the most recent transfer reflecting deep-seated concern in Washington about Chinese language entry to delicate and military-applicable American know-how through academia.
To crack down on the perceived menace of Chinese language college students conducting espionage on US soil, Trump launched a ban throughout his first time period that successfully prevented graduates within the science, know-how, engineering and arithmetic (STEM) fields from Chinese language universities believed to be linked to the navy from gaining visas to the US.
His first administration additionally launched the now defunct China Initiative, a nationwide safety program supposed to thwart China’s intelligence actions within the US, together with these aimed toward stealing rising know-how from analysis universities.
This system, which drew comparisons to the McCarthy-era anti-Communism “pink scare” of the Fifties, was cancelled by the Biden administration after dealing with widespread blowback for what was seen as over-reach and complaints that it fueled suspicion and bias towards harmless Chinese language People.
Trump’s broader tightening of US immigration coverage throughout his second time period has now unleashed a brand new wave of insecurity and uncertainty for a lot of college students and faculties.
Whereas these issues are shared by worldwide college students from many nations, the heightened tensions between the 2 nations have elevated stress on Chinese language college students and students – and the influence has already been seen.
Over the previous yr, not less than a dozen high-profile teachers with roots in China who have been working within the US have returned to China and brought up posts at outstanding universities within the nation, CNN has discovered.
And for some college students at the beginning of their tutorial {and professional} careers, the most recent growth leaves them not sure about what to do subsequent.
Amongst them is Sophie Wu, a 22-year-old from China’s southern tech hub of Shenzhen, who was accepted at a graduate program at Harvard this fall, after ending her undergraduate diploma within the US. Wu mentioned she felt “numb” after listening to the information.
“I didn’t anticipate that the administration would make such an irrational choice, and I additionally really feel that it’s extra of a retaliation than a coverage choice,” she instructed CNN. “Worldwide college students are being held hostage for some political goal.”
