An increasing number of Chinese researchers working at American universities have revealed that they are being questioned by customs officials upon entry into the United States for national security reasons. Their laptops and phones are inspected and confiscated for a few hours, especially in the field of medical science. Although the number of affected individuals represents only a small fraction of the total Chinese students studying in the U.S., these individual cases reflect the intensity of the U.S.-China technological war.
Most of these Chinese researchers hold valid scientific research or study visas but are still denied entry or deported. The exact number of these incidents is hard to verify as the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency has not provided detailed statistics on airport entry denials.
CBP stated that all international travelers entering the U.S., including U.S. citizens, must undergo inspection.
According to a report by The Guardian on April 20, Qin Yan, a pathology professor at the Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut, said, “The impact is huge.” He knew of over a dozen Chinese students from Yale and other universities who were recently denied entry into the U.S., all of whom held valid visas.
An English academic journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) reported on March 1 that in the past three months, doctoral students studying science programs at major research universities in the U.S., including Yale, Johns Hopkins, were denied re-entry into the U.S. after returning home to visit family, some of whom were banned from returning to the U.S. for five years.
Since the Chinese Communist Party aims to dominate global technology and has launched a strategy of military-civil fusion and various talent programs to acquire advanced Western technology for military development, the U.S.-China technology war has intensified. The U.S. not only restricts the export of high-tech products such as chips to China but also tightens national security reviews of Chinese students and scholars entering the country, with the range of reviewed fields expanding.
In May 2020, the Trump administration issued Proclamation 10043, banning Chinese students and scholars with F visas (student visas) and J visas (exchange scholar visas) related to the Chinese military from entering the U.S., excluding undergraduate students. This executive order empowers CBP to deny entry to Chinese graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute estimated that 95 civilian universities in China have connections with the Chinese Ministry of National Defense.
Immigration lawyer Dan Berger from Massachusetts told The Guardian, “CBP officers find it difficult to truly assess the risk of espionage.” He acted as the proxy lawyer for a Yale graduate student who was sent back to her country from Dulles International Airport in Washington in December last year, during her doctoral studies, and was prohibited from re-entering the U.S. for five years.
Berger mentioned that the denial of entry for the student was sudden, as she had an apartment in the U.S., thankfully with no pets, but some of her experiments were ongoing.
Scholars say the scrutiny has expanded into various fields, particularly in medical science, but the exact reasons for entry denials remain unclear.
A Chinese scientist who uses artificial intelligence to simulate vaccine effects stated that he was denied entry at Boston Logan International Airport and was about to serve as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School.
The Guardian reported that Harvard Medical School declined to confirm or comment on individual cases but stated that “decisions on entry into the U.S. are within the federal government’s jurisdiction, not the schools and universities’.”
The official Chinese media Global Times also reported in January a case of a Chinese researcher working at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. being denied entry.
Edward Guo, a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University, told The Guardian, “If you want to study artificial intelligence in the U.S., forget it.”
Proclamation 10043 aims to counter the CCP’s “military-civil fusion strategy.” The failure to update the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement as usual is also due to the CCP’s military-civil fusion strategy.
The agreement, signed as a milestone treaty in 1979, regulates scientific cooperation between the two countries. It is usually updated every five years, but since last August, the agreement has only been extended by six months each time. By February this year, with the final deadline approaching, the agreement was reluctantly extended for another six months.
Former Chairman of the House China Task Force Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin led a congressional group last June demanding the U.S. Department of State to abolish the agreement, claiming that the CCP had obtained military advantages through technological cooperation with the U.S.
Nevertheless, only a few Chinese graduate students undergo additional scrutiny because of sensitive research topics related to the CCP’s military-civil fusion strategy. The strategy aims to develop “the most technologically advanced army in the world” by eliminating barriers between civilian researchers and military and defense departments.
State Department spokesperson Matt Miller stated that the proportion of Chinese students denied entry is “less than one-tenth” and that “this proportion has remained stable over the past few years.”
Proclamation 10043 states that Beijing uses some Chinese students (mostly graduate students and postdoctoral researchers) as “non-traditional collectors of intellectual property,” and therefore, Chinese students or researchers studying or researching above the undergraduate level who have had or currently have contacts with the CCP military face a high risk of being exploited or recruited by the CCP and need special attention.
The State Department asserts that the CCP has been acquiring critical technology through “legal and illegal means,” including “investing in private companies, talent recruitment programs, directing academic and research cooperation toward military interests, forced technology transfer, intelligence collection, and blatant theft.”
One example of the CCP’s implementation of the military-civil fusion strategy in recent years is Ji Chaoqun, who came to the U.S. with a student visa to study electrical engineering. The U.S. Department of Justice stated that Ji was a special agent of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, collecting personal data of Chinese-American scientists and engineers recruited by Chinese espionage agencies. Ji’s mission was to obtain advanced U.S. aerospace and satellite technology. In January 2023, Ji Chaoqun was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Another case involves Yanqing Ye, a second lieutenant in the Chinese military, who obtained a J-1 exchange visitor visa for visiting scholars issued by the Department of State and studied physics, chemistry, and biomedical engineering at Boston University. She was indicted in January 2020 for visa fraud, false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government, and conspiracy. Yanqing is currently in China.
Zheng Zaosong, a Chinese cancer researcher at Boston Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center holding a J-1 exchange visitor visa, was arrested in January 2020 for attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research results on a flight to China. In January 2021, Zheng was sentenced to serve time (about 87 days), three years of supervised release, and ordered to be deported from the U.S.
According to Proclamation 10043, as of the fall of 2020, the State Department revoked over a thousand visas issued to Chinese citizens. In fiscal year 2021, under a presidential proclamation, 1,964 visas were denied, accounting for approximately 2% of the total visas issued to Chinese students.
In contrast, in the same year, as the COVID-19 pandemic gradually subsided, the U.S. issued 90,301 F-1 visas (student visas) and 3,048 J-1 visas (scholar visas) to Chinese students.
In fiscal year 2022, the U.S. issued over 155,000 visas to Chinese students and scholars, and in fiscal year 2023, 289,526 visas were issued. Chinese students have been the largest international student group in the U.S. for 13 consecutive years.
On the other hand, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated in Beijing on April 26 that although there are over 290,000 Chinese students in the U.S., fewer than 900 Americans study in China, a significant decrease from about 15,000 Americans studying in China a decade ago.