Students emerge as bargaining chip in China-US trade talks

Foreign students’ access to United States institutions emerged as a major bargaining chip in high-stakes trade talks between China and the US in London this week as China appeared to secure a softening of the US stance on Chinese students as part of a “framework deal” ostensibly aimed at winding down crippling trade tariffs between the two countries.

As part of the agreement reached after two days of talks between US and Chinese trade representatives in London that ended on 11 June, the US will provide visas to Chinese students seeking to attend American universities.

“We will provide to China what was agreed to, including Chinese students using our colleges and universities,” US President Donald Trump said on his Truth Social network a few hours after the trade deal was said to be “done”.

Trump posted that the presence of Chinese students on US campuses “HAS ALWAYS BEEN GOOD WITH ME!”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement on 28 May the US would “aggressively revoke” visas for Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who were studying in “critical fields”.

The same day, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller linked Rubio's announcement to the China trade talks. Speaking on CNN, Miller said China's industrial strategy “has been to use the student visa programme to conduct espionage on America's industrial trade secrets ... our universities, our high-tech research and even our nation’s most sensitive and classified projects and programmes”.

The extra scrutiny of Chinese visas will protect “the security of America's own engineering, scientific and medical research,” he added.

Western diplomatic sources now say the timing of Rubio’s statements was aimed at putting pressure on China in advance of trade talks. “They [the US] ratcheted up the student visa issue to gain leverage, and now they have ratcheted [it] down,” a Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

However, other measures remain in place, including an executive order to increase scrutiny of international students and staff on campuses and review social media posts of applicants for student visas.

These measures are still set to disrupt the US study plans of thousands of students, who will face uncertainty over whether or not they will in fact be granted visas to start their courses at the beginning of the academic year.

Chinese students ‘already in the mix’

David Zweig, emeritus professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and author of a recent book, The War for Chinese Talent in America: The politics of technology and knowledge in Sino-US relations, told University World News the issue of Chinese students was “in the mix all along when the Chinese first complained in Geneva, but it’s something that's never been included in the trade talks, so now it links much more,” he said, referring to trade talks between the two sides held in the Swiss city in mid-May.

In Geneva, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticised the US decision to revoke visas, saying it “damaged” the rights of Chinese students.

Alfred Wu, associate professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, told University World News the inclusion of students in the latest trade deal was surprising “because the dispute between the two countries about China’s overseas students in the US has been quite a long one.”

He said it dates back to the first Trump administration, which in 2020 barred students with links to seven Chinese military universities known as the “Seven Sons of National Defence” from entering the US.

Wu said the Chinese saw barriers to students, which are not part of its goods trade surplus with the US, as a “very crucial part of China’s non-tariff trade system, so China used it on purpose as a [bargaining] tool to check the US”, Wu said.

According to the US-based Institute of International Education (IIE), Chinese students contribute more than US$14 billion to the US economy through tuition fees and living expenses. There are almost 300,000 Chinese students in the US, compared to just 800 Americans studying in China.

According to a 5 June brief by the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin, China had little room to hit back directly after Rubio’s threat to “aggressively” revoke Chinese students’ visas.

“Since the COVID pandemic, the number of American students there [in China] has dropped to 800, from 11,000. Tit-for-tat retaliation would also counteract Xi Jinping’s directives to turn China into a scientific superpower and a leader in global education, with educational exchange and talent acquisition at the core of the strategy,” the MERICS brief said.

Technology transfer

Zweig added: “The Chinese worry that this is a part of the strategy that the US government has taken to stop the transfer of technology [to China]. They want jet engines. They want [computer] chips. They don’t want to be excluded from access to US technology.”

“Students become a key mechanism for that tech transfer,” he noted.

“The nature of the trade negotiations has changed,” he said, adding that if the London deal allowed China to continue to gain access to American knowledge and technology, “then it’s a win for China”.

Zweig said: “It's also a win for Xi Jinping if he can convince middle-class parents that he can get their kids into top universities.”

According to Zweig, China’s party leadership would have “come under terrible pressure” from Chinese parents whose dream is to send their kid to Harvard when the US announced that it was not going to take Chinese students.

Many top officials, including Xi, have sent their children to Ivy League schools in the US. In 2010, Xi’s daughter enrolled in Harvard under an assumed name.

Students in the crossfire

Katy Rosenbaum, senior director of strategic engagement and operations at the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA), in a 12 June blogpost on LinkedIn, said US threats to revoke university visas for Chinese students as part of trade talks were “deeply concerning”, noting that international students “should not be caught in the crossfire of geopolitical manoeuvring”.

She added: “Educational exchange should build bridges – not become a tool of economic warfare.

“Linking student visas to trade issues not only undermines the stability of international education – it sends a message that the US may not be a trustworthy or welcoming destination for global talent. And once that reputation erodes, it is incredibly hard to rebuild,” she wrote.

Rosenbaum called for a push for “stable, transparent visa policies that are insulated from trade disputes.” She added: “We must support the students already here, who experience real uncertainty and stress when these kinds of policies are floated.”

Chinese Communist Party links

While other countries, notably India, have been lobbying for the US to retain Optional Practical Training – a scheme that allows foreign graduates of US universities to stay on for a year or more to seek jobs in the US – Indian diplomats were not successful in tabling their concerns in formal talks, according to sources in New Delhi.

However, diplomats said China was determined to push back against any visa policy that referenced Chinese Communist Party (CCP) membership, seeing it as a direct attack on the leadership and the party elite, and therefore tied it more closely to the trade talks this week.

The Trump administration on 22 May banned Harvard University from enrolling foreign students, accusing Harvard of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”. That move has since been blocked by a US federal judge.

Several academics who declined to be quoted raised concerns about how CCP links would be vetted. “What kind of questions will be asked at the embassy or consulate? And how will it be monitored? It’s a real concern,” one said.

Wu pointed out that “although China is ruled by the Communist Party, not all public officials are CCP members, and not all people, technically speaking, act as a proxy of the Chinese Communist Party”.

Zweig noted that “30 to 40% of all the top university students in China – the best undergraduates – join the CCP while in college, at least”.

Party membership is “a major recruiting channel, and, in the past, many would join for professional career advancement, not because of ideology – the ideology doesn’t have very much meaning to young people in China these days. They join the party largely for personal advantage”, he said.

Uncertainty remains

Details of the deal struck in London by the US delegation, which also included Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and the Chinese side led by Vice Premier He Lifeng, have not yet been released.

The deal is still subject to final approval by Chinese President Xi Jinping and the US President, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

The apparent “reversal” in US policy on students comes in return, among other things, for rare earth mineral imports from China, which China has restricted.

These are considered vital for the US automobile, semiconductor, and smartphone manufacturing sectors. China produces 60% of the world’s rare earth minerals and processes nearly 90% of them.

However, the US Wall Street Journal on Thursday 12 June reported a six-month limit on Chinese rare earth licences granted to US firms, giving Beijing leverage if trade tensions flare up again, it said.

Continued uncertainty and insecurity for Chinese students will not end with this deal, according to Wu, who noted that many Chinese students who had been planning to study in the US have already decided to go elsewhere, including regional destinations such as Singapore and Hong Kong.

On Tuesday, 10 June, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce suggested US embassies and consulates would soon resume interviews for international student visas and said people should start watching for interview spots to open.

“People should watch for those spaces to be open and should continue to apply. This is not going to be a lengthy or an ongoing dynamic. It was meant for a specific, almost an administrative, adjustment,” she noted.

She said the interview pause was to ensure embassies and consulates knew what to expect in terms of additional vetting. “And that process, we were told, would be rapid,” Bruce said.