Secretary of State Marco Rubio took bold, necessary action on Wednesday when he announced that the Trump administration would be “aggressively” revoking visas issued to Chinese students who have “connections to the Chinese Communist Party or [are] studying in critical fields.” Future student visa applications from Chinese nationals will also face greater scrutiny. This is an important step toward reducing the industrial levels of espionage committed by Chinese nationals on U.S. soil every year.
Confronting this challenge is most important because China is likely to use massive military force in an attempt to conquer Taiwan by 2030. To bolster its chances of success, China is focused on stealing the most cutting-edge new U.S. technologies and then employing or altering them to boost its military. Beijing’s victory over Taiwan would mean its securing of political and economic hegemony over the Western Pacific and long-standing U.S. allies such as Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea. That will significantly reduce the economic potential and political freedom of America and our allies. It will also greatly advance China’s effort to secure global political hegemony by proving that Beijing, not Washington, is the ascendant global political power.
But the Chinese student espionage problem extends beyond military and security concerns.
The FBI estimates that this Chinese Communist Party-orchestrated espionage costs the U.S. economy between $225 and $600 billion per year. The challenge for U.S. authorities is that every Chinese citizen is required by law to conduct espionage if so ordered by the ruling Communist Party. One threat comes from intelligence officers and agents from the Chinese military, Ministry of State Security, and other intelligence services. These spies have shown a remarkably impressive ability to infiltrate even the most sensitive of U.S. government and research institutions.
But the United States also faces a significant threat from otherwise innocent Chinese students who are one day suddenly told to start using their U.S. campus access to start spying for the Communist Party. If they refuse to do so, students are often threatened that their family back home will face the withdrawal of benefits or even imprisonment. Incidentally, this concern underlines why tools such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702 intercept authority are so crucial in helping the FBI to identify newly activated spies on U.S. soil.
To counter this threat, the first Trump Justice Department introduced the “China Initiative.” It was designed to better help identify Chinese students and academics who were using their access to high-end U.S. technology or research for purposes of espionage. Unfortunately, the Biden administration then suspended this effort in deference to the Left’s fixation on political correctness. Rubio’s move reflects a broader Trump administration correction of that foolish self-inflicted wound.
This doesn’t mean, however, that the Trump administration’s move to fundamentally restrict student visas is the correct one.
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While no one is entitled to a student visa or a U.S. visa per se, the U.S. should want to attract the best minds to our shores. American students gain from the different perspectives and associated debates that foreign students bring with them. And our universities and economy at large plainly benefit from the financial outlays foreign students make to be here. Nor should the simple act of a social media post opposing U.S. or Israeli security policies be grounds alone to reject a visa, for example. And a total ban on Chinese students would be counterproductive if only in terms of reducing America’s means of recruiting Chinese nationals to return home and enter government service as CIA agents. The Trump administration would thus be wrong to significantly reduce student visas on a generalized basis.
Still, if students have expressed support for a terrorist group, or if there are credible grounds to believe they may be acting in service of a hostile foreign state, they clearly should not be allowed to threaten American interests on American soil. In that regard, Rubio’s special visa security focus on America’s preeminent global adversary is both prudent and overdue.