President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the United States will welcome 600,000 Chinese international students as part of a trade deal with the country. However, a considerable number of Chinese international students have already been implicated in espionage schemes, and access to U.S. universities has been a boon to the Chinese economy.

A 2019 FBI report showed that the Chinese government “uses some Chinese students,” particularly those studying science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, to “operate as non-traditional collectors of intellectual property” to steal sensitive information from U.S. researchers for the benefit of China. In addition to being a source of trade secrets, U.S. universities also provide a means for future Chinese workers to acquire advanced technical skills for the Chinese government and industries.

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“The Chinese Communist Party does what authoritarian regimes do: seek to make individual people appendages of the state,” Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Sobolik told the Washington Examiner. “Every Chinese student in America is under potential or actual pressure to perform duties for the CCP. That’s not their fault, and we shouldn’t suggest otherwise. We should also, however, be realistic about the problems this reality poses.”

“Policymakers shouldn’t give visas to Chinese students in STEM programs, nor should they allow sons and daughters of senior party and military officials into the country,” Sobolik added.

Indeed, Chinese international students face myriad pressures that incentivize them to act as pawns of the CCP.

In 2017, for instance, China passed a National Intelligence Law mandating that Chinese citizens “support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work” even when studying abroad. Additionally, Chinese international students on many campuses are subject to harassment from Chinese Students and Scholars Association chapters.

According to the State Department, the CSSA was established to “monitor Chinese students and mobilize them against views that dissent from the CCP.” The CSSA has been linked to industrial espionage efforts, and many former international students who led its chapters at U.S. universities have gone on to occupy senior roles in sensitive industries, such as technology and pharmaceuticals, sparking concern. CSSA chapters have reportedly organized protests against Chinese dissidents and engaged in surveillance against Chinese international students in the United States, often reporting directly to CCP intelligence agents.

The FBI’s warning to academics that Chinese international students could be trying to steal their research wasn’t a mere hypothetical, as there have been numerous cases documenting such activity.

For instance, the FBI indicted five Chinese international students on espionage-related charges in October 2024 after they were caught taking photos of military equipment at Camp Grayling, a U.S. military installation in Michigan where the Army National Guard was hosting a joint training with the Taiwanese military. Other examples include a Chinese researcher at a Midwestern medical school stealing a U.S. researcher’s patented cancer research for a university in China and a Harvard University‑affiliated medical student attempting to smuggle 21 samples related to biological research to China.

Even though reports of Chinese campus espionage are not hard to come by, some have argued that much of it still flies under the radar due to a reluctance to report. Reporters writing for the Stanford Review, a conservative student-run publication based at its eponymous university, reported in May that they spoke with multiple professors, students, and researchers who privately discussed having encountered Chinese espionage but feared speaking on the topic publicly over concerns of retaliation from the CCP, loss of funding from Chinese sources, or being branded racist.

“Many Chinese [nationals] have handlers; they [CCP] want to know everything that’s going on at Stanford,” one anonymous Chinese student told the outlet. “This is a very normal thing. They just relay the information they have.”

Chinese industry can thank U.S. academia for more than just stolen research.

China’s elite research institutions, for instance, are composed of members trained mainly abroad, including 81% of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and 51% of the Chinese Academy of Engineering as of 2020. The Chinese Academy of Sciences plays a significant role in China’s military research apparatus.

Returning international students also publish significantly more academic research than their domestically educated peers, often co-authoring with Western scientists, thus further integrating China into the global academic ecosystem.

Chinese recruiters also place a premium on foreign degrees, signaling their value to industry, as roughly 81% of corporate human resource officers said in a 2023 survey that study abroad experience was a plus for candidates.

A Washington Examiner investigation in April uncovered dozens of examples of taxpayer-supported universities training Chinese international students who went on to work for corporations — namely Alibaba, Huawei, and Tencent — that seek to actualize the CCP’s agenda.

When reached for comment, the White House referred the Washington Examiner to the president’s comments at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, during which he said that he told “[Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] that we’re honored to have their students here.”

Trump qualified his statement by saying, “We check and we’re careful, we see who is there.”

The president’s decision comes as dozens of top U.S. universities maintain partnerships with links to the Chinese military.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defended Trump’s decision by arguing that, without the influx of Chinese international students, “the bottom 15% of colleges would go out of business.”

DOZENS OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES MAINTAIN PARTNERSHIPS WITH CHINESE MILITARY-LINKED ENTITIES

“He’s taking a rational economic view, which is classic Donald Trump,” Lutnick added.

Trump’s move to allow 600,000 Chinese international students to study in the U.S. followed a massive uptick in lobbying from universities, which rely heavily on international students to remain financially solvent. Some universities doubled, or even tripled, their lobbying expenditures in the first quarter of 2025 relative to the first quarter of 2024, and many retained lobbyists with ties to the president.