Chinese Students Ditch US as Trump Vows Visa Crackdown

US is aggressively revoking visas for Chinese students with Communist Party ties or those studying critical fields

- Bloomberg

The Trump administration's move to revoke visas for Chinese students is upending Anqi Dong's dream of a US education even before it starts. The 30-year-old Shanghai lawyer, who applied to a PhD programme at the University of Texas at Dallas in January, is abandoning her plans, saying bad news for foreign students seems to be piling up by the day.

"Everything is looking just too uncertain in America. I'm now considering programmes in Finland and Norway, which I never actually thought about before. These are rich and stable places," she said.

Most Chinese students have found themselves at the sharp end of the Trump administration's push for greater scrutiny of foreigners at American universities.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday their visas would be "aggressively" revoked, including for students with connections to the Communist Party or studying in critical fields. Future applications from China and Hong Kong will also face heightened scrutiny, he said.