As US government decides to revoke visas of Chinese students, read how academic institutions have been used by China for building a spying network in the West
The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Thursday (29th March) that the US government is set to revoke the visas for Chinese students, including those having links with the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.
Rubio said that the US State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security for this purpose. This comes after the US government increased the scrutiny of all future visa applications from China and Hong Kong amid the Trump administration’s efforts to bolster national security.
A day before, Secretary Rubio ordered the US embassies across the world to stop scheduling interviews for student visas as the US government plans to restrict the entry of foreign students in the American educational institutions. Chinese students form the second largest pool of international students studying in US universities after India. During 2023-24, over 270,000 Chinese students were studying in the US, amounting to one-fourth of the total foreign students in the US.
Speaking to the media on Thursday, President Trump said that he wants to scrutinise the foreign students taking admissions in the US universities. “They’re taking people from areas of the world that are very radicalised, and we don’t want them making trouble in our country,” he said.
The US crackdown on Chinese student visa is likely to disrupt the Chinese spying network in the US. China is notorious for carrying out espionage campaigns in its rival countries by targeting individuals in companies, universities and government agencies. In July 2021, four Chinese nationals were charged in the US for being part of a Chinese global espionage campaign in which 12 countries including the US were targeted between July 2009 and September 2018.
Chinese running a spying network in the US academic institutions
China is said to have established an effective spying network at the top US universities including the Ivy league universities like Harvard and Stanford, which also receive massive funds from the Communist Party of China (CCP). The Chinese military sends its spies disguised as students who are trained to steal intellectual property and research documents from the university labs and send them to China.
The US agencies found out about the Chinese spy network in the US academic institutions in the year 2020, after the arrest of Prof. Lieber, who was a research scientist at Harvard. Two Chinese spies disguised as researchers were also charged as agents of a foreign government. The Chinese spies lied about their research work and used their access to smuggle research samples out of the country.
In October 2022, the US authorities indicted four Chinese nationals including three Ministry of State Security (MSS) intelligence officers for spying for China. The Chinese nationals, identified as Wang Lin, Bi Hongwei, Dong Ting, aka Chelsea Dong, and Wang Qiang, were entrusted to recruit individuals for the Chinese government. For this, they targeted professors, former law enforcement officials, state homeland security officials and others to gain access to sensitive information to be passed on to the Chinese government.
These Chinese nationals posed as academics from a purported academic institute at the Ocean University of China, also known as the Institute for International Studies (IIS). They targeted professors at US universities to gain access to sensitive equipment and information.
Netherlands, Canada and Finland raised concerns over Chinese spy networks
In 2021, the spying agencies of Netherlands, Canada and Finland raised concerns regarding Chinese espionage attacks on government, companies and universities. The three countries flagged concerns about collaborating with China. Netherlands’ intelligence agencies said that the country’s academic institutions face the threat of cyber-attacks by China. In addition to that, China also sends researchers, PhD candidates and students in Netherlands’ academic institutions as spies.
Finland agencies accused the Chinese government of trying to take control over the critical infrastructure in the country, including telecommunications, energy, water distribution, airports, roads and ports. Canadian intelligence agencies also raised concerns over the Chinese government’s attempts to target several sectors of the country, including biopharmaceutical and health, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, ocean technology, and aerospace sectors.
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