Grounded Dreams: Inside America’s Visa Ban

The Trump administration says it will aggressively revoke the visas of Chinese students studying in the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this would include those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields. Last year, there were an estimated 280,000 Chinese students studying in the US, and it’s not clear how many of them could be affected. Relations between Beijing and Washington have plummeted in recent months as a tit fortat trade war erupted between the two superpowers sparked by Donald Trump’s tariffs. This morning, the Chinese foreign ministry has given its reaction and our Beijing correspondent Laura Bicker has this analysis. The foreign ministry here in Beijing has described a move by the United States to revoke the visas of Chinese students as discriminatory and based on the pretext of ideology and national security. The foreign ministry spokesperson Ma Ning went on to say that this move would damage the reputation of the United States in the international community.

Now there are a few things that are very unclear about what the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced. He has said that the visas of those close to the Communist Party will be revoked. However, there are around 100 million members of the Communist Party here in China. How close does a family member have to be to have their visa revoked is one question many people are asking. There are also around 280,000 Chinese students currently studying in the United States. Will they be in fear of having their visas revoked even if they already have them in place? Many questions being asked at this time. Now, the Trump administration has done this before. In 2020, the Trump administration revoked the visas of a thousand Chinese students. Since then, there has been an agreement between China and the United States with the previous president Joe Biden and President C when they met in 2023 to encourage more cultural exchanges. In fact, President C says he wants to see 50,000 US students studying here in China in the coming years. But it does seem now that these kind of academic and people-to-people exchanges have become the latest victim of competition between the two superpowers. Laura Bicker reporting.