Revoking the Visas of Chinese Students in the U.S. Is a Horrible Idea

Opinion|China Revoked My Visa, and Came to Regret It

President Trump’s first term gave us the “China Initiative,” a government program intended to root out Chinese espionage. The result was ethnic profiling of Chinese and Asian American researchers, flimsy cases that were eventually dropped and no prosecutions of scholars for spying or theft of secrets. President Joe Biden wisely eliminated it.

Mr. Trump’s current administration is back at it, however, demonizing Chinese citizens once again with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement on May 28 that the United States would “aggressively revoke” the visas of Chinese students. While it appears that Mr. Trump’s team may have backed off on that measure for now after trade negotiations last week, the threat lingers and damage may have been done already.

Targeting Chinese students, researchers and academics was a horrible idea the first time around and still is. It would harm America academically, economically and strategically. It will leave us more ignorant about our biggest rival and fuel paranoia while doing little to safeguard sensitive information.

We should of course be concerned about China’s wide-ranging espionage efforts.

Much of this is focused on the U.S. government or corporations. But universities are targets too. Chinese government tactics are known to include pressuring students from China to gather information on American know-how and innovation from their U.S. colleges, coupled with threats against their families in China if they don’t comply. Innocent students like these are China’s victims, too. We should be devising ways to protect their academic freedom and safety while on U.S. soil. Excluding them en masse blames the victim and throws the baby out with the bath water.

Very little of the research that happens on American campuses is classified, anyway. Many universities forbid it under the principle that academic research should be openly available. Some areas of study are more sensitive than others, but U.S. restrictions and screening procedures already block or restrict visas for Chinese researchers in certain fields. A 2020 Trump executive order, for example, limits entry by graduate students with past or present links to Chinese entities that the United States determines are involved with technologies that have potential military use.

Mr. Rubio’s announcement added worryingly vague new criteria to these already robust standards.

He singled out students “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party,” which is almost meaningless for a country where the party runs everything. Just as every American is connected to the U.S. government in some way — getting a driver’s license, paying taxes, going to public schools — dealing with the Communist Party is a fact of life for Chinese citizens, not an ideological commitment.