Both parties are trying to sound tougher on China, but the reality is clear: The United States is engaged in asymmetric warfare with the Chinese Communist Party. Anyone not compromised by Beijing understands this. Yet despite China’s state-backed efforts to infiltrate our universities and technical fields, the U.S. continues to admit more than 300,000 Chinese students each year.
Asymmetric warfare relies on subversion, espionage, and intellectual property theft — all of which benefit from the very type of immigration China’s “Thousand Talents Plan” encourages. So why are we helping it along?
Continuing to allow China to flood our science and technology fields with hundreds of thousands of its nationals — often at little to no cost — is indefensible.
For decades, the United States has admitted between 270,000 and 350,000 Chinese students annually, making China one of the top two sending countries, alongside India. In the 2023-24 academic year, 123,000 Chinese nationals were enrolled in graduate programs, many in sensitive STEM fields. Another 62,000 participated in “optional practical training,” allowing them to work in those fields while still on student visas.
Beyond student visas, the U.S. grants over 20,000 H-1B visas to Chinese nationals each year, along with more than 12,000 J-1 visas for scholars and tens of thousands of additional work visas. Over the past 30 years, the U.S. has issued nearly 2 million green cards to Chinese nationals — more than any country except Mexico — despite clear evidence of China’s long-running campaign of economic and academic subversion.
Seed and subvert through immigration and espionage
In 2019, President Trump’s director of national intelligence warned in the Worldwide Threat Assessment that “China’s intelligence services will exploit the openness of American society, especially academia and the scientific community, using a variety of means.” Yet the U.S. continues to open its doors to China, allowing its nationals to infiltrate universities, dominate technical fields, work in government labs, engage in trade theft, and even operate as intelligence agents.
While some Chinese nationals coming to the U.S. may be fleeing the communist regime, there is no effective way to distinguish them from those working on behalf of Beijing. Every week, U.S. attorneys announce new indictments of Chinese students for espionage, surveillance, or trade theft. Many of these individuals go on to work in highly sensitive fields, further compromising national security.
In 2019, the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee on investigations released a bipartisan report detailing how 10,000 Chinese nationals were conducting research in the Department of Energy’s national labs. The report found that foreign-born researchers employed by U.S. scientific agencies were secretly funded by China. The report’s conclusion was blunt: “American taxpayer-funded research has contributed to China’s global rise over the last 20 years.” Beijing has ensured that the U.S. is paying for the very technology that could be used against us.
The report’s authors note that despite China publicly announcing in 2008 its intent to recruit overseas researchers with access to advanced research and technology, the FBI did not prioritize monitoring these efforts until mid-2018 — years into China’s mass migration pipeline. As the report puts it, this failure allowed China to shift “from brain drain to brain gain.”
While Beijing attempts to recruit talent of all nationalities, including by bribing native-born researchers, its most effective strategy is sending its own nationals to American universities and using the U.S. visa system to gain access to sensitive industries. According to the Senate subcommittee report, China’s Thousand Talents Plan manages 200 recruitment programs with the goal of bringing in 2,000 “high-quality overseas talents,” including scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and finance experts. The program operates under a highly organized administrative structure that coordinates its efforts, while the U.S. visa system continues to provide an open pipeline for espionage and recruitment.
Last fall, the FBI charged five Chinese foreign students at the University of Michigan with photographing a live-fire training exercise involving the Michigan National Guard and the Taiwanese military at Camp Grayling. In December, the Justice Department charged a Chinese national who had overstayed his visa with illegally shipping arms and ammunition to North Korea.
Visa overstays are a growing concern, particularly among Chinese nationals. Some estimates suggest that in 2022 alone, more than 9,000 Chinese students remained in the U.S. after their visas expired, raising further national security risks.
We need a moratorium, not bogus ‘vetting’
Some argue that instead of halting the flow of Chinese foreign students, we should focus on improving vetting measures. But how can we possibly determine who is being manipulated or controlled by the CCP? More importantly, why should that burden fall on us?
The 2019 Senate subcommittee report highlights the challenges in vetting individuals on F-1 and J-1 visas. A case from the Southern District of New York revealed that Chinese government officials exploit weaknesses in U.S. visa screening, particularly for students and research scholars. In 2019, Chinese national Zhongshan Liu was charged with conspiring to fraudulently obtain U.S. visas for Chinese government employees. According to the complaint, Liu facilitated visas for individuals posing as research scholars, but their true purpose was to recruit scientists and researchers for China’s talent recruitment programs.
Clearly, this has become a ubiquitous problem. We have no way of distinguishing who is here for nefarious reasons from those who pose no threat.
Even if some individuals on student, scholar, or worker visas are entirely well intentioned, they remain vulnerable to CCP blackmail. Nearly all of them have family members in China, giving Beijing leverage over their actions.
As the 2024 DNI threat assessment warned, “The PRC monitors Chinese students abroad for dissident views, mobilizes Chinese student associations to conduct activities on behalf of Beijing, and influences research by U.S. academics and think tank experts.” Given that level of surveillance and coercion, it is easy to imagine how the CCP could pressure even those working in U.S. research labs who hold deep antipathy toward the regime.
A recent report from Freedom House observed: “The biggest threat to international students and scholars studying and working in the United States is the government of China.” But the CCP is not just a threat to students — it is a threat to the American people as a whole.
Continuing to allow China to flood our science and technology fields with hundreds of thousands of its nationals — often at little to no cost — is indefensible. This is not simply an educational exchange; it is a long-term strategy by Beijing to infiltrate critical industries, collect intelligence, and gain a decisive advantage over the United States.
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