The US needs Chinese students in humanities and Indians in sciences

The United States should welcome more Chinese students, but to study humanities rather than sciences, a diplomat in Washington said Monday, noting that local universities are limiting Chinese students’ access to sensitive technology for security reasons.

Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said there are not enough Americans studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics. He said the United States needed to recruit more international students for those fields, but from India, an increasingly important partner, not China.

For years, Chinese have made up the largest body of foreign students in the United States, numbering nearly 290,000 in the 2022/23 academic year.

But some in academia and civil society argue that deteriorating relations between the United States and China, and concerns about the theft of American expertise, have derailed scientific cooperation and subjected Chinese students to unwarranted suspicion.

“I would like to see more Chinese students come to the United States to study humanities and social sciences, not particle physics,” Campbell told the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

Campbell was asked about the “China Initiative” introduced by Donald Trump’s administration, aimed at combating Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft, which ended under Joe Biden’s administration after critics said it encouraged racial profiling. of Asian Americans.

Campbell said American universities had made “careful attempts” to support the continued higher education of Chinese students, but had also been “careful about laboratories” and some of the activities of Chinese students.

“I think it’s possible to restrict and limit certain types of access, and we’ve seen that across the board, particularly in technology programs across the United States,” Campbell said, noting that some had suggested China was the only source to make up for the shortage. science students.

“I think the biggest increase we need to see in the future would be much larger numbers of Indian students coming to study at American universities in a range of technological and other fields.”

Furthermore, he added that the United States had to be careful not to eliminate ties between China and the United States, but that officials in Beijing were largely to blame for any withering in academic, business or nonprofit sector ties.

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