Revoking China student visas accelerates U.S. science decline

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday, May 28, that the administration will begin to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students.”

The U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security will make changes (yet unspecified) to criteria for China and Hong Kong student visas and increase scrutiny of applications. Rubio targeted students “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” but failed to specify those fields.

Tammy Bruce, speaking for the State Department, stated the U.S. “will not tolerate the CCP’s exploitation of U.S. universities or theft of U.S. research, intellectual properties or technologies to grow its military power, conduct intelligence collection or repress voices of opposition.”

Some ignorant politicians contend that foreign students take the place of American students who would otherwise pursue STEM graduate studies and research. But quite to the contrary, American students entering science fields declined after 1970. National Research Council data show U.S. Ph.D.’s in engineering fell from above 2400 in 1971 to under 1200 by 1983. Meanwhile, the rise in foreign student engineering graduates at American universities grew from slightly over 400 in 1971 to surpass U.S. students in 1983 and today, from 70-80%+ of U.S. engineering graduates are foreign born.

The Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University tallied the number of STEM PhDs graduates. China had surpassed the U.S. in 2003. That number for China in 2025 was 77,179 while the U.S. would only graduate 39,959. But of those U.S. graduates, 23,254 were foreign-born. If the U.S. rejected foreign graduate students, half of the U.S. university research programs would have to close their masters and doctoral programs due to lack of sufficient students.

For over a decade, foreign students from China were the largest group of foreign students. 277,398 China students studied in U.S. colleges during the 2023-24 academic year with 5,600 more from Hong Kong, a decline of 4 percent. In the last two years, India became our top source of students, increasing 23 percent to 331,602. Calculating the percent of graduates pursuing STEM fields as a percentage of total graduates, China students led with 41%, followed by Russia (37%), Germany (36%), Iran (33%) and India (30%). Fewer than 20% of U.S. graduates pursue a STEM degree.

Any claim that China only advances by stealing from U.S. research is clearly false. The Belfer report states: “The reality is that China is laying the intellectual groundwork for a generational advantage in AI. The Air Force’s former Chief Software Officer, Nicolas Chaillan, even went so far as to claim that China’s victory in the AI race is ‘already a done deal.’ Last year [2020], China overtook the U.S. for overall AI citations, with a 35% increase from 2019. In AI’s hottest subfield—deep learning—China has six times more patent publications than the United States.” In AI patents, China has led in Patent Cooperation Treaty applications since 2019, with the number in 2022 being 40,000, followed by the U.S. (9,000), South Korea (5,000) and Japan (3,000). The U.S. was in the lead before 2017.

The U.S. National Science Foundation “The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2022” report analyzed our percentages of scientists and engineers with doctorates now working in the U.S. (in 2021) that were born overseas: computer sciences and math (60.3%), engineering (57.1%), life and agricultural sciences (50%), physical and earth sciences (42.4%) and social and behavioral sciences (20.6%). Our “STEM workforce relies heavily on foreign-born individuals, who account for about one-fifth of the STEM workforce (and higher proportions in certain fields). Among foreign-born STEM workers with an S&E degree, about 50% are from Asia, with most from India or China.”

Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology released its analysis of science citations that indicate highest quality research in 2022. Chinese papers constituted 27.2% of the 1% of top-cited papers. The U.S. followed with 24.9%. In the larger category of top 10% of cited papers, China led with 26.6% while the U.S. claimed 21.1%. In total output of science papers during 2018-2020, China researchers published 407,181 compared to the United States with 293,434 scientific research papers.

Most American legislators appear to totally ignore that the research published openly in science journals is neither intellectual property nor a national security secret.

While the U.S. is withdrawing from international exchange programs, China’s Ministry of Education announced on May 13 that new joint arrangements had been made with 44 non-Chinese institutions, and 68 new international programs would start in September. China is expanding its international science collaboration. The U.S. is moving into isolation.

Meanwhile, China’s President Xi has invited 50,000 U.S. students to come study at China’s universities. And they have no concern over some of them being Republicans or stealing secrets.