If the Trump administration succeeds in blocking Harvard from enrolling international students, the hardest-hit group would be students from China, who make up the school’s biggest share of current students from overseas.
The consequences are likely to extend far beyond those select few who could gain entry to the prestigious university. The move could reshape the broader relationship between the two countries by cutting off one of the few remaining reasons that people in China still admire the United States.
The flow of students from China to the United States has long been one of the most reliable ballasts in the two countries’ relationship, despite growing geopolitical tensions and China’s superpower ambitions. China until recently was by far the biggest source of international students to the United States, sending hundreds of thousands of people each year. Even as other symbols of the United States — Hollywood, for example, or iPhones — lost their cachet for many Chinese, American universities remained a source of aspiration, even veneration.
Elite universities like Harvard played a particularly important role in that admiration. In recent years, even student exchanges have started to suffer from the two countries’ frosty ties, as many have worried about anti-Chinese discrimination, difficulty securing visas or crime. But schools like Harvard were an exception: They remained as attractive as ever to Chinese students, who were willing to overlook other concerns for the promise of a best-in-the-world education.
Now, even that beacon is in question.
“Everyone comes here with the ideal of changing the world,” said a current Chinese graduate student at Harvard, who requested anonymity for fear of endangering her visa. “But when I’m trying to understand the world, the world shuts me out.” She said she now wants to return to China after graduation.
In a sign of how tense the relationship between the two superpowers has become, the reaction among many Chinese on social media — where the Harvard news was a top trending hashtag on Friday — was mixed. There was concern and outrage. But in some quarters, there was also grim acceptance or even glee.
Some commentators said Mr. Trump was accelerating China’s ascent. They celebrated that American universities would lose both revenue and talent, some of which might flow to China instead. At least one university in Hong Kong has already said that it is willing to offer unconditional admission to any transfer students from Harvard.
Ren Yi, a high-profile blogger who goes by the pen name Chairman Rabbit and is himself a Harvard graduate, wrote that the United States government was “castrating” its own top university.
“This is a great change unseen in a century,” he wrote, quoting China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who has used the phrase to describe his confidence in China’s rise. (Mr. Xi’s own daughter also graduated from Harvard.)
Asked about the decision on Friday, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry said it would “only damage the image and international reputation of the United States.”
Even before the move against Harvard, Chinese students in the United States had plenty of reasons to worry. American state and federal lawmakers have proposed restricting Chinese citizens’ ability to study in the United States, citing national security concerns. Students have reported being turned away at the border despite having valid visas, or having their visas abruptly revoked.
China’s education ministry last month issued a formal warning to Chinese students to consider the risks of studying in the United States — its first alert to students going abroad since 2021.
The Trump administration’s cuts to research funding have also weighed heavily on many Chinese scholars, some of whom say they worry about being financially able to do their work. The Harvard student who said she now plans to return to China said that she had an offer for a research position rescinded because of the federal funding freeze.
In China’s flourishing industry of overseas study consultants, many encouraged their clients to apply to other universities, including outside of the United States, as backup. On a live broadcast with hundreds of viewers on Friday, one consultant warned that other schools might soon see similar restrictions.
But for some, Harvard’s exceptional status — its wealth, its prestige — also gave them hope that the university, and American society more broadly, would weather the turmoil.
Yu, a Harvard master’s student who asked to be identified by only her given name for fear of retaliation, said that she had been heartened by how people at Harvard had pushed back against the government’s attacks. In addition to the university administration, her fellow students, Chinese and otherwise, had banded together to share international travel plans with each other in case anyone ran into trouble, and to dissect the language of executive orders.
She had expected that life as an international student would get harder under Mr. Trump, she said, and she had not drastically changed her view of the United States.
“I more look at the values the country holds and how people are trying to defend those values,” she said. “It will be difficult, but there will be a fight, and we do have some hope.”
Siyi Zhao contributed research.
Vivian Wang is a China correspondent based in Beijing, where she writes about how the country’s global rise and ambitions are shaping the daily lives of its people.
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