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On Sunday, the Associated Press (AP) reported that Gu, a 22-year-old Chinese philosophy student, was deported back to China from a Texas airport mere hours after his arrival. The AP painted him as a starry-eyed scholar whose American dream was stomped out on the tarmac. But buried at the end of the story are facts that complicate AP’s “poor student” narrative: Gu is a member of the Communist Youth League—the Chinese Communist Party’s official training ground—and his phone contained communications referencing the China Scholarship Council, the government body that bankrolls most Chinese students in the U.S., especially those aligned with the Ministry of State Security. Those aren’t throwaway facts; they’re red flags. AP may not think that justifies deportation, but it absolutely does. Still, Gu’s case isn’t really about him—it’s a window into the Trump administration’s erratic, flip-flopping approach to Chinese students. Will America keep sending back potential spies? That, for now, is anyone’s guess.
Just three months ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced plans to “aggressively revoke” visas for Chinese students, signaling a hard-line stance against potential espionage. Now, in yet another whiplash moment, President Trump has declared his intent to admit 600,000 Chinese students—more than double the current enrollment of about 277,000—after a request from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Minding the Campus contributor Chris Crandall noted that Xi’s request shows just how much Beijing values a VIP pass into American universities, making Trump’s about-face all the more puzzling and raising questions about his administration’s coherence and commitment to its own “America First” rhetoric.
Trump defends this pivot on two grounds: economics and diplomacy. Economically, he argues that Chinese students are essential to keeping American colleges alive, with nearly 100 institutions closing or merging in the 2023–2024 academic year amid declining enrollment caused by a shrinking U.S. birthrate and Americans’ low trust in higher education. (Confidence has ticked up slightly, but most Americans still say they have low confidence in colleges and universities.) Diplomatically, Trump framed the decision as a gesture to avoid “insulting” Beijing, telling the Daily Caller that keeping ties cordial with a nuclear-armed adversary is better than stirring the pot. And then there’s the transactional part: Trump wants China’s rare earth minerals. Never mind that the United States already has its own supply—“we have these minerals, but let’s bend over backwards for theirs” is not exactly a winning slogan.
[RELATED: Trump Has Rolled Out the Red Carpet for Chinese Students]
So, neither of Trump’s rationales holds up.
Take the economic argument. To be clear, I don’t buy into conservative “let the market sort it out” orthodoxy. But Trump—and Republicans generally—claim to. And by propping up failing colleges with foreign tuition dollars, he’s betraying the very free-market principles he and his whole party claim to defend. As economist Richard Vedder argues, struggling colleges should be allowed to fail. Giving universities the advantage of relying on foreign students only normalizes their outrageous and inefficient ways of operating. They’ll keep assuming that someone will pay to keep them afloat. If they want to survive, they should do so by cutting bloat and figuring out how to streamline education for Americans—not by being handed a government lifeline from the Trump administration to prop up their inefficiency.
The diplomatic rationale isn’t much better. As my colleague Kali Jerrard quipped, Trump’s policy rolls out the “welcome mat” for potential spies, trading long-term national security for short-term optics with Xi. We all want diplomacy, sure, but China’s version of diplomacy is to smile while picking your pocket.
As president of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), Peter Wood recently described, the CCP has long used American universities to “pick flowers in foreign lands to make honey in China.” Minding the Campus and the NAS have documented how Chinese students, often affiliated with the Communist Youth League or the China Scholarship Council, are required by Chinese law to report back to Beijing. Many end up in sensitive labs with military applications, quietly funneling knowledge home. (Read NAS’s China and Our Children).
And it’s not just technology theft. Beijing also uses colleges and universities to shape U.S. policy. Take Tsinghua University’s Global Alliance of Universities on Climate, which partners with UC Berkeley’s California-China Climate Institute. In 2023, California even signed its own climate agreement with China—skating dangerously close to constitutional prohibitions on states conducting foreign policy. Partnerships like these masquerade as benign academic exchanges, but as Ian Oxnevad has reported, they’re part of a broader strategy of influencing U.S. policy, shaping it in a way that favors China. Add to that China’s espionage operations—like the “Salt Typhoon” campaign that targeted UCLA, California State University, Loyola Marymount University, Utah Tech, and others to steal intellectual property in telecommunications and engineering—and the risks are obvious. Importing more Chinese students doesn’t just help Beijing steal secrets; it expands the attack surface for cyber campaigns.
[RELATED: Xi’s Secret Weapon? U.S. Higher Education]
The Biden administration already made this worse by killing Trump’s China Initiative in 2022, a program that was designed to counter academic espionage. Why was it canceled? Political optics, maybe. Calling out Chinese espionage was smeared as “racist.” But it was more likely killed because of compromises tied to Hunter Biden’s China-linked business deals. Whatever the reason, the move created a vacuum that CCP-affiliated actors have eagerly exploited. The irony is that Trump, who claims to distinguish himself from Biden on China policy, is now heading down the same path of weakness.
Beyond espionage, the labor market effect is real. Foreign students trained in the United States often stay through the H-1B visa program, filling roles in critical industries—including those with major defense contracts. Amazon Web Services, with $20 billion in defense contracts, employs H-1B workers on projects vital to national security. Meta, flagged for CCP ties, and Oracle, which has supported Chinese surveillance infrastructure used against the Uyghurs, also rely on this talent pipeline. Somehow Palantir appears saintly in contrast. Astonishingly, American policymakers pretend this is normal while pushing to expand it. The real reason, I suspect, is that business leaders—and the Republicans who take their calls—put ROI above national security. (Read American Security Project’s CODE WAR: How China’s AI Ambitions Threaten U.S. National Security)
Equally troubling, by training Chinese students here, we’re supercharging China’s own universities. If these graduates don’t stay in the U.S., they return home armed with knowledge that strengthens Beijing’s institutions and fuels its authoritarian agenda. Schools like Tsinghua and Peking, for example, are not neutral bastions of learning—they are extensions of the CCP.
And its educational institutions are growing stronger. Its Schwarzman Scholars program brings Americans and other internationals to Beijing, under a curriculum tightly managed by the CCP. The FBI has questioned students returning from such programs, concerned they were recruited as tools of the Party. This is not unlike America’s own history of using universities to normalize Western values and spread democracy—an effort I think was naïve, if not hubristic. But at least the U.S. was trying—allegedly—to spread liberty. Beijing, by contrast, is openly pushing the CCP’s agenda on the world, waging a battle of ideas that stands in direct opposition to Western values.
So the stakes of Trump’s latest flip-flop go far beyond geopolitics—they’re civilizational.
Flooding our universities with Chinese students doesn’t just risk losing an edge in artificial intelligence or quantum computing; it also undermines Western education, weakens our own workforce, props up failing institutions that shouldn’t be saved, and enriches a rival power bent on censorship and control.
This isn’t just about national security. Setting spying aside, allowing a strategic rival to enter our educational institutions—sometimes with taxpayer subsidies (why, for example, did Gu receive a full ride?)—does not serve Americans. Our colleges and universities should serve Americans first, developing our students and protecting our intellectual capital. Rigorous vetting—and yes, deportations—aren’t cruel. What’s cruel is pretending we can hand Beijing the keys to our campuses and expect no consequences.
Trump needs to get a grip, provide a consistent policy, and stop betraying the very “America First” promises that propelled him into office.
Follow Jared Gould on X.
Image: “President Trump Travels to Texas” by the Trump White House on Flickr
This is nuts. Keep some of the best young minds away from America. “Protecting intellectual capital” indeed. A defensive, reactive, cowering country. Not the America we used to know. Hard for me to explain to previous Chinese students who eagerly contributed to American science, and then helped build American business.
In a way, it makes me think of when Hitler drove out as many of their best, usually very loyal scientists, to force them to work and build America.
Meanwhile certain people are doing their best to damage American science. I guess they fit with RFK Jr. and the rest of the wackos. MAGA hates American Greatness!
I think of the report this week of Alibaba, the Chinese company, now planning to make their own AI chips, with the cutoff of Navidia chips by the U.S. government. Down goes my stock. If Alibaba passes Nvidia by, we would deserve it.
But on the whole, Trump, oddly enough, seems to be recovering his healthy instincts.
Are you arguing that allowing 600,000 Chinese students into the country is a good thing?
less than 600,000 over two years*
Well too bad the low IQ MAGA will never be able to contribute anything to science and technology. So yeah, Trump is right.
In a word, yes. I would say “recruit” them, not “allow” them. Recruit the ones we want.
I know a university well where literally as I type right now, people — tenure track and non tenure faculty, staff, janitors, graduate students, administrative people — are being laid off because of the damage caused by people like Trump.
It’s not really clear what Trump is actually proposing now. But let’s say the number of Chinese students — undergrad and grad — increases by 300,000 to 600,000. That would be about 1.5% of students in American colleges. So let’s say an instructor goes from having a class of 200 in an intro course to 203. Not enough to even notice in the class. But enough money, in aggregate, to keep people from being laid off. I am not making that up, and I know what I’m talking about.
The bigger picture — about the fate of American science — is something else, and a matter I’ve gone into more than once, and I’ll leave it alone now.
Do you really believe funding cuts are the genuine reason for these layoffs, or are institutions just using them as an excuse to hoard as much capital as possible?
To yeahheah (sounds uncomfortably like Yahyah of the late leader of Hamas?) — I understand your sentiment about the MAGA types. Not all of them are low IQ types, but I take your point.
I would recommend that you suppress your negative sentiments, if you can, and try to read and follow Lincoln’s words as the American Civil War was winding down.
To Jared Gould:
You ask, and I will try to give a serious and accurate answer:
‘Do you really believe funding cuts are the genuine reason for these layoffs, or are institutions just using them as an excuse to hoard as much capital as possible?’
I find this kind of question, which seems to come from the right a lot, but also the left, to be kind of puzzling. Do you think the Pres of a U, or better, the Trustees, really enjoy thinking about — what — counting their endowment account every night? There are some people like that — but most people have the opposite problem, or, since they are bound by law, constraint.
In fact, endowment funds and gifts are legally bound to accrue returns on investments, and/or perhaps expend some of the returns. With endowments, usually bound legally by contract by agreement with the donor for income money to be distributed in perpetuity, while also growing so that the gift grows with the size of the economy, more or less. So a typical annual payout is 4% or so, as a prudent payout.
This sounds kind of abstract, and it is, so let me talk about the concrete situation that I am familiar with right now. A shortfall of the “general funds budget” — money over which there is discretion as to how to spend it — note that doesn’t generally include endowment funds. Let’s say the budget shortfall is 4% or so — this is pretty common these days, I think. Since most “general funds expenditures” pay salaries + benefits — that translates, more or less, to 4% of jobs being cut. If it is your job, ouch!
Why is there this shortfall? In the present case, it is largely or entirely due to shortfalls in high tuition of international students. This results in sticking it to mostly American employees. And also reduce services to mostly American students. Maybe that less-popular 9:00 a.m. Intro Biology course gets canceled. No, it means tuition goes up for American in-state students.
Thanks Trump!
And no, you can’t raid scholarship funds or research funds from the endowment to make that up. I have actually sat on budget committees where we have talked about shortfalls. We have never, ever talked about trying to raid the Endowment Foundation. Partly because that would be illegal to do. And also, the Foundation — an independent corporation, probably wisely — would go ballistic.
I would now tend to fault the Pres of the U for perhaps using the shortfall to scheme to alter things in the U programs to their own purposes or desires.
I would really fault for the administrations not working a lot harder to collaborate with staff, faculty and otherwise, to solve the budget shortfall, if need be, on a continuing basis. Things used to be done a lot more that way in the old days.
In fact, a 4% shortfall is not that much. It doesn’t mean you need to make a bunch of poisonous layoffs — which in many cases will cause long-time damage.
“Work together to solve problems.” Have you heard that lately?
It would not be easy — but could be doable, and constructive.
” The FBI has questioned students returning from such programs, concerned they were recruited as tools of the Party.”
Who says you have to go to China for that?
The Resident Manager of my UMass apartment complex, a graduate student, told me that he was an actual Party Member. I suspect he was. I also suspect that he was trying to recruit me for espionage.
They really don’t understand Americans. I believe he presumed that since I wasn’t on good terms with a state university (I wasn’t), I wouldn’t be on good terms with my country, which probably is the case in China. Instead, I was hoping that a Federal Grand Jury would investigate umASS (still am), and I was genuinely interested in how the ChiCom government worked — not that I supported it.
And he never said anything explicit — I knew someone who I could have reported it to and would have if he’d had, and as this was 15+ years ago, there is nothing I could tell the FBI now that would be of any use.
I don’t know if recruiting was a side gig or what — he was getting a finance degree because the party wanted to learn American finance.
“Economically, he argues that Chinese students are essential to keeping American colleges alive, with nearly 100 institutions closing or merging in the 2023–2024 academic year amid declining enrollment caused by a shrinking U.S. birthrate and Americans’ low trust in higher education.”
It’s not just keeping the colleges alive, but what secondary and tertiary impacts would their closing have? One that comes to immediate mind is that if a college closes without a teachout plan, student loans get canceled.
Qui Bono — who benefits from the colleges remaining open?
That may be what is really behind this….