As tensions with China rise, scientists at America’s leading universities complain of stalled research after crackdown at airports
Stopped at the border, interrogated on national security grounds, laptops and mobile phones checked, held for several hours, plans for future research shattered. ⠀
Earlier this month the Chinese embassy in Washington said more than 70 students “with legal and valid materials” had been deported from the US since July 2021, with more than 10 cases since November 2023. The embassy said it had complained to the US authorities about each case. ⠀
“The impact is huge,” says Qin Yan, a professor of pathology at Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut, who says that he is aware of more than a dozen Chinese students from Yale and other universities who have been rejected by the US in recent months, despite holding valid visas. Experiments have stalled, and there is a “chilling effect” for the next generation of Chinese scientists. ⠀
The refusals appear to be linked to a 2020 US rule that barred Chinese postgraduate students with links to China’s “military-civil fusion strategy”, which aims to leverage civilian infrastructure to support military development. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute thinktank estimates that 95 civilian universities in China have links to the defence sector.
Nearly 2,000 visas applications were rejected on that basis in 2021. But now people who pass the security checks necessary to be granted a visa by the State Department are being turned away at the border by CBP, a different branch of government.
“It is very hard for a CBP officer to really evaluate the risk of espionage,” said Dan Berger, an immigration lawyer in Massachusetts, who represents a graduate student at Yale who, midway through her PhD, was sent back from Washington’s Dulles airport in December, and banned from re-entering the US for five years. ⠀
Academics say that scrutiny has widened to different fields – particularly medical sciences – with the reasons for the refusals not made clear.
Yeah I mean, pay your graduate students about twice as much and make them only work 40 hours a week. Then you won’t have to import labor from outside the county.
racist shithole country
You’re going to have to say which one you’re talking about.
I think the context is pretty obvious here.
Which one is known for being a melting pot of immigrants with a diverse population of every ethnicity on the planet?
The one where the oligarchs exploit all people equally.
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The reality is both exist in the United States. There is at least distinct cultures that are slowly trying to divide themselves apart with in the US today.
That’s a hell of a way to describe a band of racist white countries that have been parasitizing upon the rest of the world banning Chinese products. You clowns are an absolute hoot. Oh and let’s just see what people who face racism in the west have to say on the subject.
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Yeah, it’s terrible how capitalists and their megacorps might not profit as much if that’s happening…
(which it isn’t these days btw; countries like the US and China violated bullshit british IP laws when industrializing, and they don’t really need to do that once they are industrialized)
You are making it sound like China and its large corporations weren’t also very interested in profits and market domination.
That’s included in the “industrializing” part, no?
Under capitalism, industrialization and therefore “market domination” realistically means ignoring the laws meant to keep competition down.
Stealing IP by… Publishing their own work on publicly accessible journals and conferences? The absolute horror. You don’t steal public IP, you gain (or lose) the rights to use it.
I would have no problem if everything was open sourced. However, Chinese capitalists steal this data, make it proprietary and profit off of it themselves. This is the “horror”.
It’s public research. How exactly do you propose to make public research proprietary? The university holds the rights.
China files more patents than the next nine countries combined: https://www.wipo.int/en/ipfactsandfigures/patents
China is first country to hold over 4 million domestic patents
The number of China’s domestic valid patents does not include those held in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
shut up racist
I foremost hope that the United States can regain a shred of its diginity and stop treating every foreigner like a criminal, stop funding a genocide, stop killing its own population with guns, have a decent social services program, etc. This is obviously a fantasy, so I secondarily hope these researchers can go back to China and do good work, where they won’t be treated as second-tier human beings.
Same shit different era. Always gotta be persecuting somebody.
Also when Silicon Valley copies and steals they get praised as revolutionary innovators.
The Silicon Valley thieves are just copying and stealing from over a century of US industrial strategy.
snk typical Chinese tyranic- … what do you mean it’s America doing it??
Not surprising when you look at all the anti-China stuff coming out of mainstream liberal orgs and communities.
pro china, anti us stuff coming from the guardian??
Biden doing the Trump thing. Recently came up with genius tarifs for Aluminium as well.
Yeah they are studying here allowed by the US government getting searched goes with it
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she cute
keep your rape culture to yourself.
