Trump administration’s conflicting messages on Chinese student visas reflect complex US-China relations

President Donald Trump appears to have walked back plans for the U.S. State Department to scrutinize and revoke visas for Chinese students studying in the country.

On June 11, 2025, Trump posted on his social media platform TruthSocial that visas for Chinese students would continue and that they are welcome in the United States, as their presence “has always been good with me!”

The announcement came weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that his department would begin scrutinizing and revoking student visas for Chinese nationals with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, or whose studies are in critical fields.

The contradictory moves have led to confusion among Chinese students attending college or considering studying in the United States.

Over time, Chinese nationals have faced barriers to studying in the U.S. As a scholar who studies relations between the two nations, I argue that efforts to ban Chinese students in the United States are not unprecedented, and historically they have come with consequences.

Student visas under fire

Since the late 1970s, millions of Chinese students have been granted visas to study at American universities. That total includes approximately 277,000 who studied in the United States in the 2023-2024 academic year.

It is difficult to determine how many of these students would have been affected by a ban on visas for individuals with Chinese Community Party affiliations or in critical fields.

Approximately 40% of all new members of the Chinese Communist Party each year are drawn from China’s student population. And many universities in China have party connections or charters that emphasize party loyalty.

The “critical fields” at risk were not defined. A majority of Chinese students in the U.S. are enrolled in math, technology, science and engineering fields.

A long history

Yung Wing became the first Chinese student to graduate from a U.S. university in 1852.

Since then, millions of Chinese students have come to the United States to study, supported by programs such as the “Chinese Educational Mission,” Boxer Indemnity Fund scholarships and the Fulbright Program.

The Institute for International Education in New York estimated the economic impact of Chinese students in the U.S. at over US$14 billion a year. Chinese students tend to pay full tuition to their universities. At the graduate level, they perform vital roles in labs and classrooms. Just under half of all Chinese students attending college in the U.S. are graduate students.

However, there is a long history of equating Chinese migrants as invaders, spies or risks to national security.

After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the U.S. Department of Justice began to prevent Chinese scholars and students in STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and math – from returning to China by stopping them at U.S. ports of entry and exit. They could be pulled aside when trying to board a flight or ship and their tickets canceled.

In one infamous case, Chinese rocket scientist Qian Xuesen was arrested, harassed, ordered deported and prevented from leaving over five years from 1950 to 1955. In 1955, the United States and China began ambassadorial-level talks to negotiate repatriations from either country. After his experience, Qian became a much-lauded supporter of the Communist government and played an important role in the development of Chinese transcontinental missile technology.

During the 1950s, the U.S. Department of Justice raided Chinatown organizations looking for Chinese migrants who arrived under false names during the Chinese Exclusion Era, a period from the 1880s to 1940s when the U.S. government placed tight restrictions on Chinese immigration into the country. A primary justification for the tactics was fear that the Chinese in the U.S. would spy for their home country.

Between 1949 and 1979, the U.S and China did not have normal diplomatic relations. The two nations recognized each other and exchanged ambassadors starting in January 1979. In the more than four decades since, the number of Chinese students in the U.S. has increased dramatically.

Anti-Chinese discrimination

The idea of an outright ban on Chinese student visas has raised concerns about increased targeting of Chinese in the U.S. for harassment.

In 1999, Taiwanese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee was arrested on suspicion of using his position at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to spy for China. Lee remained imprisoned in solitary confinement for 278 days before he was released without a conviction.

In 2018, during the first Trump administration, the Department of Justice launched its China Initiative. In its effort to weed out industrial, technological and corporate espionage, the initiative targeted many ethnic Chinese researchers and had a chilling effect on continued exchanges, but it secured no convictions for wrongdoing.

Trump again expressed concerns last year that undocumented migrants from China might be coming to the United States to spy or “build an army.”

The repeated search for spies among Chinese migrants and residents in the U.S. has created an atmosphere of fear for Chinese American communities.

Broader foreign policy context

The U.S. plan to revoke visas for students studying in the U.S. and the Chinese response is being formed amid contentious debates over trade.

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lin Jian accused the U.S. of violating an agreement on tariff reduction the two sides discussed in Geneva in May, citing the visa issues as one example.

Trump has also complained that the Chinese violated agreements between the countries, and some reports suggest that the announcement on student visas was a negotiating tactic to change the Chinese stance on the export of rare earth minerals.

When Trump announced his trade deal with China on June 11, he added a statement welcoming Chinese students.

However, past practice shows that the atmosphere of uncertainty and suspicion may have already damaged the climate for Chinese international students, and at least some degree of increased scrutiny of student visas will likely continue regardless.