(CTN News) – The United States should welcome more Chinese students, but only to study the humanities rather than sciences, said the second-ranked US ambassador on Monday, emphasizing that security concerns are limiting Chinese students’ access to key technologies at US universities.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell stated that not enough Americans were studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. He stated that the United States needed to recruit more international students in those professions, but from India, an increasingly crucial security ally, rather than China.
U.S. Encourages More Chinese Students in Humanities
For years, Chinese students have been the largest international student body in the United States, numbering almost 290,000 in the 2022/23 academic year.
However, some in academia and civic society claim that deteriorating US-China ties, as well as concerns about the theft of US expertise, have stymied scientific collaboration and unfairly accused Chinese students.
“I would like to see more Chinese students coming to the United States to study humanities and social sciences, not particle physics,” Campbell told the Council on Foreign Relations think group.
Campbell was questioned on the China Initiative, which was launched by the Trump administration to combat Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft but was halted by the Biden administration after critics claimed it encouraged racial profiling of Asian Americans.
Campbell stated that while U.S. institutions made “careful attempts” to encourage Chinese students’ continuing higher education, they were also “careful about the labs, some of the activities of Chinese students.”
“I do think it is possible to curtail and to limit certain kinds of access, and we have seen that generally, particularly in technological programs across the United States,” according to him.
According to Campbell, some have stated that China is the only source for filling the science student gap.
“I believe that the largest increase that we need to see going forward would be much larger numbers of Indian students that come to study in American universities on a range of technology and other fields.”
Campbell said the United States needed to be careful not to sever connections with China, but leaders in Beijing were mostly to blame for any deterioration in academic, economic, and non-profit sector relations.
“It really has been China that has made it difficult for the kinds of activities that we would like to see sustaining,” Campbell said, adding that international businesspeople and philanthropists were hesitant of long-term stays in China due to personal security concerns.