Chinese graduate students play a particularly important role in U.S. international relations. The hundreds of thousands of Chinese studying in the United States form the backbone of “personal diplomacy” between the two countries. Economically, they make up a significant portion of the new talent entering U.S. businesses and research institutions, and they have propelled the growth of higher education in the United States. Geopolitically, they are distrusted in the United States and China, subject to increasingly strict visa reviews by American authorities and longer and more rigorous security checks for jobs in China. In recent years, largely due to COVID-19, the number of Chinese students in the United States has declined, from more than 370,000 in 2019 to around 290,000 in 2023.

How are Chinese graduate students in the United States – particularly in STEM fields – responding to the growing attention paid to them on both sides of the Pacific? What can be done to persuade many of them to stay in the United States or to ensure better conditions for their studies and research? We interviewed the students themselves. Over several years, we conducted several hundred hours of interviews with nearly fifty Chinese graduate students at universities across the United States, studying at a mix of institutions large and small, public, private, and religious. We discuss some of what students told us in a recently published article with the Harvard Kennedy School.

What do these students see as the main challenges facing Chinese graduate students in the United States? The main concern for most students was their visa. Many students face increasingly lengthy and seemingly unpredictable application procedures to obtain a U.S. visa. Even students enrolled in five- or six-year programs must renew their visas each year, creating uncertainty about whether they will be able to successfully complete their programs or whether they will be able to leave the United States for trips to abroad, for example to attend university conferences or visit relatives. Several students told us that they or their friends had given up on applying for a tourist visa in previous years, out of fear that a rejected tourist visa application would make applying for a student visa even more difficult.

After obtaining their visas, students expressed concerns about campus security, their cultural “integration” into U.S. institutions, and their ability to lead conversations about U.S. or Chinese domestic politics. A focus of the American media and academia has been the FBI’s “China Initiative” and its successor approaches. In general, Chinese students did not tell us many concerns about the China Initiative or similar federal programs, and tended to think that the China Initiative would not affect them, even if the initiative was in place. course. They have, however, expressed frustration or disappointment with what they see as increasing restrictions on PRC citizen researchers in the United States – in terms of research funding, internships or fellowships.

American universities have little power to change some of these circumstances, but there are many other ways they can improve the living conditions of their international students. We found that a surprisingly high number of Chinese STEM graduate students, even at the most elite US institutions, do not know how to use their university’s healthcare system or health insurance, and assume that going to the hospital is their only option for basic health care. needs. Many students receive little support in improving their English skills and are mostly helpless if they encounter abuse from a professor or university administrator.

Even during the worst times of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, we found that an overwhelming majority of young Chinese scientists studying in the United States wanted to stay in the United States at least for their first job after getting their diploma. Yet many U.S. universities offer these students little preparation to work and live effectively in the United States, while new funding or visa restrictions make it harder to improve their skills. If U.S. policymakers and universities want to continue to attract and enroll large numbers of Chinese graduate students—and want to ensure that many of the most talented of them remain in the United States—it would be good to address the key concerns and challenges identified by these students. first step.

China’s weak economic recovery from COVID-19 and a strong U.S. job market have increased incentives for Chinese students to stay in the United States. U.S. policymakers could revise visa rules to ease the fears of students who might not be able to attend conferences or see family for an extended period of time, and universities could step up efforts to ensure that international students are prepared for life in the United States, regardless of where they are. choose to stay.

Richard Yarrow is a research fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. Victoria Li was a research assistant at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Their study, “The experience of Chinese graduate students in American higher education through Covid and US-China tensions”, was recently published by the Mossavar-Rahmani Center at the Harvard Kennedy School.