Students bear the victim of China-us Crossfire

Xiao Chen appeared on Thursday morning at the American consulate in Shanghai, hours after Washington announced that this would do “Aggressive” pulls the Visa of Chinese students into.

The 22-year-old had a visa appointment: she went to Michigan in the fall to study communication.

After a “pleasant” conversation, she was told that her application had been rejected. She got no reason.

“I feel like a floating duck cleafing in wind and storm,” she said, with the help of a common Chinese expression used to describe, both uncertain and helpless.

She had been hopeful because she already had the acceptance letter. And she thought she had barely escaped the bomb in recent days.

First, the government of Donald Trump moved to end Harvard University’s ability to register international studentsA movement that has since been blocked in court. And then it said it had stopped Visa agreements For all foreign students.

But now Chen is ready for plan B. “If I can’t get the visa in the end, I will probably take a gap year. Then I will wait to see if things will get better next year.”

A valid visa may still not be enough, she adds, because students with Visa can be “stopped at the airport and deported”.

“It’s bad for every Chinese student. The only difference is how bad.”

It has been a gloomy week for international students in the US – and perhaps even more difficult for the 280,000 Chinese students who would have noticed that their country was selected.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Name Harvard of “Coordination with the Chinese Communist Party”.

State Secretary Marco Rubio said that the relocation against Chinese students in the US would include “who with the Chinese Communist Party or Studying in critical areas with connections”.

That could touch a broad strip of them in view of the membership of the Communist Party is common among civil servants, entrepreneurs, business people and even artists and celebrities in China.

Beijing has called it a “politically motivated and discriminatory action”, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has submitted a formal protest.

There was a time when China sent the highest number of foreign students to American campuses. But those figures went away as the relationship between the two countries.

A more powerful and more and more assertive Beijing now clashes with Washington for supremacy in just about everything, from trade to technology.

Trump’s first term had already spoken to Chinese students. He signed an order in 2020, apart from Chinese students and researchers with ties with the army of Beijing to obtain American Visa.

That order remained in force during President Joe Biden’s term of office. Washington has never made clear what “tires” are with the army, so many students had them Visas withdrawn Or were rejected on the American borders, sometimes without a good explanation.

One of those who did not want to be called, said that his visa was canceled by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) when he landed in Boston in August 2023.

He was accepted in a postgraduate program at Harvard University. He started studying regenerative medicine with a focus on breast cancer and had obtained his master’s degree from a soldier affiliated research institution in China.

He said he was not a member of the Communist Party and his investigation had nothing to do with the army.

“They asked me what the relationship was between my research and the defense cases of China,” he said the BBC. “I said, how can breast cancer have something to do with the national defense? If you know, tell me.”

He believes that he never made a chance because the officials had already made a decision. He remembered that one of them asked, “Has Xi Jinping bought your suitcase for you?”

What was surprising or even shocking then slowly became normal because more and more Chinese students had difficulty guaranteeing visas or recordings to study science and technology in American universities.

Mr. Cao, a psychology -Major whose research entails neuroscience, spent the past school year applying for PhD students in the US.

He graduated from top universities – references that could send him to an Ivy League school. But of the more than 10 universities he applied for, only one has expanded one offer.

Trump’s cutbacks on biomedical research did not help, but the distrust of Chinese researchers was also a factor. Accusations and rumors about espionage, especially on sensitive subjects, have been in recent years about Chinese nationals at American universities, even derailed in some careers.

“One of the professors even told me:” We rarely give offers to Chinese students nowadays, so I can’t give you an interview, “Mr. CAO told the BBC in February.

“I feel that I am just a grain of sand under the wheel of time. There is nothing that I can do.”

For those who graduated from American colleges, returning to China has not been easy either.

They used to be praised as a bridge to the rest of the world. Now they see that their once familiar degrees do not draw the same reaction.

Chen Jian, who did not want to use his real name, said he quickly realized that his bachelor’s degree from an American college had become an obstacle.

When he first returned in 2020, he did an internship at a bank in the state and asked a supervisor if there was a chance to stay.

The supervisor did not say it downright, but Chen received the message: “Employees must have local degrees. People like me (with overseas degrees) will not even get a response.”

He later realized that “there were really no colleagues with an overseas not -background in the department”.

He went back to the US and did his master at Johns Hopkins University and now works at the Chinese Tech giant Baidu.

But despite the degree of a prestigious American university, Mr. Chen does not feel that he has a lead because of the fierce competition from graduates in China.

What did not help is the suspicion of foreign graduates. Beijing has increased warnings from foreign spies and told citizens to look for suspicious figures.

In April the prominent Chinese businesswoman Dong Mingzhu told shareholders in a meeting with a closed door that her company, home device maker Gree Electric, will “never” recruit Chinese people abroad “because among them are spies”.

“I don’t know who and who is not,” said Mrs. Dong, in comments that were leaked and went viral online.

Days later, the CIA released promotional videos that encourage Chinese officials who dissatisfied with the government to become spies and provide classified information. “Your destination is in your own hands,” said the video.

The suspicion of foreigners such as the US and China further moves away from each other is a surprising turn for many Chinese people who remember that they are growing up in a completely different country.

Zhang Ni, who also did not want to use her real name, says that she was “very shocked” because of Mrs. Dong’s comments.

The 24-year-old is a recent graduate journalism at Columbia University in New York. She says that she “doesn’t care about working at GREE”, but what surprised her was the shift in Attitudes.

That so many Chinese companies “don’t like anything that might be associated with the International” is a huge contrast with where Mrs. Zhang grew up – a youth “filled with (conversations focused on) the Olympic Games and World Expo”.

“When we saw foreigners, my mother would encourage me to talk to them to practice my English,” she says.

According to many, that willingness to exchange ideas and learn from the outside world seems to be declining in China.

And America, once a place that attracted so many young Chinese people is no longer so hospitable.

Looking back, Mrs Zhang can only remember a joke that her boyfriend made during a farewell dinner before she left for the US.

Then a flashing comment, the fear now summarizes in both Washington and Beijing: “will not be a spy.”

Additional reporting by Kelly NG