US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced that the United States will start "aggressively" revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.
If applied to a broad segment of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese university students in the United States, the move could disrupt a major source of income for US collages and universities and a crucial pipeline of talent for US technology companies.
China said it firmly opposes the plan and urged the US to be more constructive towards stable bilateral relations, the Chinese foreign ministry said.
The US used ideology and national security as a "pretext" for its decision, which harms legitimate rights and interests of the students, foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a regular news briefing.
President Donald Trump's administration has sought to ramp up deportations and revoke student visas as part of wide-ranging efforts to fulfill its hardline immigration agenda.
Earlier this week,the administration ordered US embassies around the world to pause scheduling new visa interviews for foreign students.
The State Department instructed embassies abroad, including in Ireland, to halt student or exchange visitor visa appointments - such as for F, M and J visa programmes - until further guidance is issued.
In a statement yesterday evening, Mr Rubio said the State Department will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from China and Hong Kong.
"The US State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students," he said.
The decision to cancel Chinese student visas comes despite a recent pause in the US-China trade dispute.
International students - India and China together accounting for 54% of them - contributed more than $50 billion to the US economy in 2023, according to the US Department of Commerce.
The State Department has broad authority to issue and revoke visas.
The administration last week cited Harvard University's ties to China as among several reasons for revoking its ability to enrol foreign students, a move temporarily blocked by a US judge.
Mr Rubio's statement did not offer details on how extensively the visa revocations would be applied. Even a relatively small number could disrupt the flow of Chinese students seeking out higher education in the US that began in the late 1970s from Communist-governed China.
Recent decades saw the United States become the destination of choice for many Chinese students looking for an alternative to China's intensely competitive university system and drawn to the strong reputation of US schools. Those students typically come from wealthier families able to afford the high cost of US universities.
Many of those have stayed after graduating and have bee ncredited with contributing to US research capacity and the US workforce.
The number of Chinese students in the US dropped to about 277,000 in 2024, however, from a high of around 370,000 in 2019, pulled lower by growing tension between the world's two biggest economies, heightened US government scrutiny of Chinese students, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
As the US-China geopolitical rivalry has escalated into what many analysts consider a new form of cold war, US agencies and Congress have stepped up scrutiny of China's state-sponsored influence and technology transfers at US colleges and universities.
The US has become increasingly concerned that China uses open and federally funded research environments in the US to circumvent export controls and other national security laws.
Greater scrutiny and uncertainty over visas has led more Chinese students to opt for schools in Europe, and more graduates now return to China to work.
During Mr Trump's first administration, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led a drive to rid US university campuses of Chinese government-funded Confucius Institute cultural centres, saying they worked to advance China's "global propaganda and malign influence" and to recruit "spies and collaborators."
As a result, many US institutions cut ties with the centres.
The Trump administration has also expanded social media vetting of foreign students and is seeking to ramp up deportations and revoke student visas as part of wide-ranging efforts to fulfill its hardline immigration agenda.
