ARGUMENT: China & U.S. academe Chinese Presence in U.S. Academic Institutions

When talking about the intensifying U.S.-China competition, most people think of trade battles, tariffs, human-rights abuses in Xinjiang, the militarization of the South China Sea, China’s growing nuclear arsenal, and similar issues. In many ways, however, U.S. universities and research institutions are a more immediate battleground for the U.S.-China rivalry.

In the fall of 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the China Initiative, an initiative aiming to curtail economic espionage and trade-secret theft by China at American firms and universities. The administration also restricted the ability of Chinese citizens to study in the United States, including canceling visas for Chinese students who had academic ties to universities and institutions linked to the Chinese military. There are now proposed pieces of legislation which would go even further. The Secure Campus Act, proposed in 2020 by three Republicans—Senators Tom Cotton (Arkansas) and Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee) and Representative David Kustoff (Tennessee) —would bar all citizens of mainland China from receiving student or research visas to the United States for graduate or postgraduate studies in STEM fields. 

How many Chinese students – undergraduate, graduate, and post-doc – and researchers are there in American institutions of higher learning?

Rory Truex writes:

In a typical year, tens of thousands of Chinese scientists come to the United States. Across STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields, an estimated 41,000 master’s and 36,000 doctoral students in American universities are Chinese citizens. This represents 16 percent of all U.S. graduate students in those disciplines. The overwhelming majority—about 85 to 90 percent—seek to assimilate and gain U.S. citizenship.

Source: Rory Truex, “What the Fear of China Is Doing to American Science,” The Atlantic, 16 February 2021

Caroline Wagner writes:

Chinese students studying in the United States in 2017 numbered about 141,000 undergraduates and 125,000 graduate students. An estimated 4,400 Chinese scholars (which can include students) came to the U.S. in 2017 to work in American labs, joining more than 9,000 already in the U.S. Chinese doctorate earners graduating from American universities in 2018 with plans to remain in the U.S. numbered more than 4,000 – similar to the preceding five years.

Source: Caroline Wagner, “Intense Scrutiny of Chinese-Born Researchers in the U.S. Threatens Innovation,” The Conversation, 26 January 2021

Both Truex and Wagner criticize what they regard as over-broad restrictions on Chinese students and researchers. Truex notes that the FBI says it has more than 2,000 ongoing investigations tied to China in some way, but to date authorities have made arrests at only a dozen academic institutions. The majority of these cases focus on fraud, not espionage:the researchers in question have allegedly failed to disclose affiliations and funding from Chinese entities. 

The problem, both Truex and Wagner say, is that even if we factor in the damage from espionage and intellectual theft, the damage of denying American universities and research centers the talents, skills, and innovative spirt of tens of thousands of Chinese researchers, academics, and students is far greater, and the first to suffer are American science and technology, economic welfare, and national security.

Truex sums up this view:

In the end, the U.S. government must also accept that some degree of theft, plagiarism, and loss of intellectual property is the price of America’s open approach. Data and computer code are shared, working papers are circulated, research is disseminated publicly, and participation is open to all. The strength of this model is that it is social; by communicating findings broadly, scientists receive feedback, collaborate, and innovate further. This is the philosophy that has propelled U.S. science ahead of the rest of the world. This model can be abused by bad players—perhaps even by spies—but it is still working far better than a more restrictive alternative would. If Americans cordon off our scientific communities in the name of security, we will be sacrificing our greatest advantage, and the core of who we are.

The open-approach view advanced by Truex and Wagner is not shared by everyone, but their call for an honest and dispassionate cost-benefit analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the two competing approaches – open or restrictive – is well taken.