By Liu Yuanling
THE year 2020 has been an annus horribilis for the world economy, global health and Sino-US relations. Bilateral relations further deteriorated due wholly to the United States’ hostile trade and security policies toward China.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement during an interview on Aug 31 is an apt example of why Sino-US ties have deteriorated: “Look, not every Chinese student who is here is working on behalf of or at the behest of, the direction of the Chinese Communist Party, but it’s something President Trump has taken a serious, serious look at.”
In line with Pompeo’s remarks, some universities in the US either asked some Chinese students and researchers to leave or expelled them, with the University of North Texas in Denton expelling 15 visiting scholars from China in late August.
Since the beginning of this year, the Donald Trump administration has taken a series of measures to block bilateral exchanges, including personnel exchanges, institutional cooperation and joint project construction.
Such measures include (but are not limited to) Trump signing an executive order in May banning Chinese students and scholars with ties to the Communist Party of China or government institutions, especially those engaged in “civil-military integration” programs, from pursuing postgraduate studies or research in the US, blacklisting 13 Chinese universities and threatening to enlarge the list in the future, and reduce the visa period for Chinese journalists to 90 days.
Also, the US State Department has decided to refer to 10 Chinese media and other organizations as “foreign missions”, including Xinhua News Agency, CGTN, China Central Television, People’s Daily and Confucius Institute.
On June 6, MathWorks, the US developer of MATLAB, a high-performance language for technological computing widely used by engineering students, wrote to the teachers and students of Harbin Engineering University and Harbin Institute of Technology saying they are “prohibited from providing technical or customer support” for the two universities’ students “due to recently imposed U.S. government regulation”. And US law enforcement officials have arrested four Chinese academics by falsely accusing them of fraud for allegedly hiding their “background related to the People’s Liberation Army” when applying for a visa.
Targeting of Chinese students, scholars wrong: Pompeo, national security advisor Robert C. O’Brien, and some other high-ranking officials have all claimed that the Chinese government uses people-to-people and cultural exchange mechanisms as tools of political propaganda and to steal high-tech and other secrets. By doing so, they have created an excuse for the Trump administration to impose restrictions on cultural and other people-to-people exchanges and ban more students and scholars from studying, visiting or conducting research in the US.
This has forced thousands of Chinese students (and their families) who planned to study and work in the US to change their plans, and seek academic and employment opportunities in other countries, especially in Europe. As for domestic tutorial and training institutes that help prepare such students, they have been forced to find other ways to sustain their business.
On Aug 26, the University of North Texas sent a letter to 15 visiting researchers from China saying their visa program stands canceled, thus forcing them to leave the US at short notice amid the travel restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The university did not cite any reason for canceling the program except that the researchers are associated with the Chinese Scholars’ Council and probably made the decision under pressure from Texas politicians, some of whom are zealously pushing the US administration’s anti-China agenda devised by politicians such as Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
Conflicting signals from US govt and officials: Local newspaper Denton Record Chronicle said in an Aug 31 report that the university had stopped working with CSC, while Jim Berscheidt, a spokesman for the UNT, said: “This decision is limited to the 15 visitors funded by the CSC. It does not affect any students enrolled or studying at the university, and we continue to welcome international students from all over the world, including China.” He is wrong, for the UNT move is bound to affect other Chinese students.
Actually, all the about 369,000 Chinese students studying in the US can feel the change in the atmosphere following the UNT’s decision, simply because the 15 visiting scholars are not fundamentally different from them and they could be the next to be “deported”.
– The Daily Mail-
China Daily news
exchange item
