Trump Plans to Ban Chinese Students with Military Ties

The Trump administration is reportedly accelerating plans to ban Chinese students with military ties from attending university in the US, as Beijing prepares its own national security law for Hong Kong.

American officials with knowledge of the discussions at the top of government told the New York Times that the long-mooted plan would involve cancelling student visas for Chinese students who took their undergraduate courses at military-affiliated institutions back home.

The fear is that many of these individuals may be actively selected by the Chinese government, and required to collect information from the research projects they end up working on. There’s a double threat from those same graduates then landing jobs at high-profile US tech companies and continuing their espionage activities.

It’s unclear how widespread the practice actually is, and students engaged in wrongdoing would certainly try to hide their affiliation.

Back in January, the Department of Justice (DoJ) indicted a People’s Liberation Army lieutenant who lied about her background and secured a position studying at Boston University’s (BU) Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering from October 2017 to April 2019. There, she allegedly stole info for military research projects and profiled US scientists for her bosses.

Estimates suggest only around 3000 individuals would be affected by the mooted plans out of a potential 360,000 Chinese students in the US, although if they are formally announced it would come at a significant juncture.

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