(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) An increase in the enrollment of Chinese exchange students in American universities has raised national security concerns, as it may provide the Chinese Communist Party more opportunities to infiltrate American institutions.
Enrollment of international students increased to nearly 950,000, with an estimated 291,000 of them coming from China, according to the Daily Caller.
Some argue that the increased number of Chinese students brings several economic benefits, such as additional grants for STEM research.
However, experts in national security believe that these opportunities could be a double-edged sword.
“With an adversary nation like China, some of the STEM-related benefits are double-edged,” said Anders Corr, the publisher of Journal of Political Risk, a peer-reviewed journal examining the impact of events such as war and terrorism.
Corr said China aims to learn as much as it can from American STEM researchers, eventually hoping to overtake them.
“China has already outpaced our industrial strength by extracting it from the U.S. and allies since the 1970s, and now it is attempting the same scientifically,” he added.
According to U.S. intelligence experts, American universities are a security soft spot. Spies who come to American campuses usually escape without a hitch.
Dozens of Chinese students and professors have been convicted of espionage after taking advantage of their university positions to steal intellectual property.
Peter Wood,president of the National Scholars Association, said that by getting so many Chinese students into U.S. colleges, China has afforded a golden opportunity to weaken America from within.
“Last year China enrolled more than 290,000 students in U.S. universities—30.6[%] of the total number of international students,” Wood said.
He noted that the Chinese government contributes a significant amount of money to ensure its students make it onto American campuses.
“The leaders of those universities look the other way when many of these students turn out to be agents of the Chinese Communist Party who are bent on acquiring U.S. technical expertise, cultivating close relations with our top researchers and engaging in outright theft of intellectual property,” Wood said.
The Trump administration canceled more than 1,000 visas of Chinese students after identifying the universities as a vulnerable area for spies. The Biden administration also uses the policy, denying visas to students who attended specific Chinese universities or have official government relationships.
