President Trump said Friday that he doesn’t want ‘anything in return’ from the Chinese government in exchange for maintaining current student visa levels.
On Aug. 11, 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection admitted Fengyun Shi to the United States at the San Francisco International Airport as an agricultural engineering graduate student at the University of Minnesota.
Less than three years later, the FBI arrested Shi for prohibited operation of an unmanned aircraft system, violation of national defense airspace, and photography of defense installations after an investigation revealed Shi utilized a commercial drone to take photographs of U.S. naval bases in the Norfolk, Virginia, area.
In October 2024, federal prosecutors charged five Chinese students at the University of Michigan with charges related to attempting to monitor Camp Grayling in Michigan. In June, the FBI arrested two Chinese nationals for smuggling into America a fungus called fusarium graminearum, which is considered an agroterrorism weapon, which they claimed was for research at the University of Michigan. Later the FBI arrested another Chinese doctoral student at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and charged him with smuggling biological materials into the U.S. and making false statements.
(That doctoral student was from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in… Wuhan, China. Does that location ring any bells? Wasn’t that place really big on social media about five years ago, because it went viral?)
While the vast majority of students and researchers from China are in the United States for legitimate academic reasons and contribute to the diversity of backgrounds and ideas important in our society, the Chinese government uses some Chinese students—mostly post-graduate students and post-doctorate researchers studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)—and professors to operate as non-traditional collectors of intellectual property. These Chinese scholars may serve as collectors—wittingly or unwittingly—of economic, scientific, and technological intelligence from U.S. institutions to ultimately benefit Chinese academic institutions and businesses.
Shortly after taking office, the Trump administration appeared to enact much tougher scrutiny of Chinese students who wanted to study in the United States, with considerably fewer admitted.
In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced, “under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields. We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.”
That’s why it was such a surprise when President Trump said, regarding China on Monday, August 25, “I hear so many stories about we’re not going to allow their students or no, we’re going to allow their students to come in. We’re going to allow it. It’s very important, 600,000 students.”
That seemed like a sudden and odd reversal of a policy announced by Rubio.
The following day, Trump doubled down:
Q: Mr. President, in May, Secretary Rubio said that they were aggressively removing visas of Chinese students. Yesterday, you said you wanted to allow 600,000 Chinese students to study in the United States. Could you and the secretary clarify what is the policy on Chinese students in the United States of America?
Trump: Well, we think we’re — you know, look, we’re getting along very well with China and I’m getting along very well with President Xi. I think it’s very insulting to say students can’t come here, because they’ll go out and they’ll start building schools and they’ll be able to survive it, but I like that their students come here. I like that other countries’ students come here. And you know what would happen if they didn’t, our college system would go to hell very quickly. You’d have — and it wouldn’t be the top colleges, it would be colleges that struggle on the bottom, and you take out 300,000 or 600,000 students out of the system.
Friday, the White House offered a “clarification” to Fox News that no policy would be changing at all: “President Trump isn’t proposing an increase in student visas. The 600,000 refers to two years’ worth of visas. It’s simply a continuation of existing policy.”
That still would indicate that the earlier plan to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students” is no longer operative, as they used to say during Watergate.
In an interview with the Daily Caller Friday, Trump continued to sing the praises of Chinese students studying on American campuses and indicated the continued level was necessary to ensure the continued operation of American colleges and universities.
DAILY CALLER WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT REAGAN REESE: You’re allowing 600,000 Chinese students to still study here –
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: 600,000 over two years –
REESE: Over two years. I’m curious if this is a negotiation tactic, or is this something you think benefits the country?
TRUMP: I think that it’s very insulting to a country. I have a very good relationship with President Xi. I think it’s very insulting to a country when you say you’re not going to take your students, and they have probably 300,000 – 600 is over two years – but they have, let’s say 300-350,000 students. It’s also good for our system, when you take them out and you know who’s going to be affected, the lesser colleges, the top colleges aren’t going to be, it’s the lesser colleges…
Later in the interview:
REESE: Is there something you hope to get specifically in return for allowing their students to still study?
TRUMP: No, no, I don’t want anything in return. We’re doing well. They’re paying us hundreds of billions of dollars. They paid Biden, you know?
Apparently all of the concerns about espionage, and whether universities and colleges’ increasing financial dependence on foreign students is a bad thing, are gone.
When the U.S. State Department announced the new visa policies, the press release declared, “New Visa Policies Put America First, Not China.” If nothing is changing, then how should we describe the status quo visa policies that Trump is defending? “China First”?