Specter of China hovers over US colleges

ATLANTA – The leaves were turning red and orange at Georgia Institute of Technology on a recent afternoon, and students were studying for midterms. Yet within this quiet haven, a global conflict has raged.

Georgia Tech, as the university is known, has been pulled into the geopolitical strife between the United States and China. A group of U.S. lawmakers say that Chinese officials have been trying to pilfer research from Georgia Tech and other American universities and use their resources to strengthen China’s military.

In a September report, Republican members of two separate committees in the House of Representatives said that Beijing has been benefiting from the U.S.-funded research done at Georgia Tech and other universities in this country.

The report claimed that research intended to help the U.S. military has inadvertently given a boost to the Chinese armed forces by allowing Chinese researchers access to knowledge and technology that could ultimately have militaristic ends.

Chinese scientists have managed to obtain such resources through joint U.S.-China educational initiatives and similar programs, the report said. American research is being used to develop Chinese semiconductors, artificial intelligence and military technology, it warned.

The new Trump administration could mean that the U.S.-China university partnerships and exchange programs will be placed under even more scrutiny, say academics and experts in the field. David Zweig, the author of a new book, “The War for Chinese Talent in America,” told RFA that university administrators may face now increased pressure.

“It puts those exchanges at greater risk,” Zweig said, referring to the U.S.-China university partnerships. It may be “that the new administration will investigate the exchange programs or will stop them, or they will broaden what is seen as threats to national security.”

He and others worry the claims of the Republican lawmakers are too far-reaching and are unnecessarily shuttering much-needed research programs. At least one American scientist who worked on such projects denied allegations made in the recent congressional report, telling Reuters the research was both early-stage and all in the public domain.

The discussion around these tensions is the latest in long running disputes over the role of U.S. higher education in competition with China. Amid shifting dynamics in U.S-China relations, students are often paying the price.

Ripple effects

Those dynamics today are testy. The mood in the U.S. now is one that, regardless of party, politicians agree that China poses a danger to this country.

“Anything having to do with China right now—you’re able to score political points by being the most hawkish,” said Margaret Kosal, an associate professor of international affairs at Georgia Tech.

A defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, expected to pass this year, will likely include provisions against China and warnings to U.S. universities in particular; universities could even be blocked from receiving U.S. Defense Department funds for some research.

Chinese officials say that academic exchanges promote better understanding between the two cultures and do not pose a threat to the United States. Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, told RFA in an email that the accusations from the U.S. lawmakers are unwarranted. Liu criticized lawmakers for “blocking normal scientific research exchanges and cooperation between the two sides in the name of ‘national security.’”

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Chinese influence at universities has been a long-running issue, especially regarding the study of technology. In 2018, Congress restricted federal funding to schools with the Chinese cultural programs known as the Confucius Institutes because of concerns about influence operations. Since then, nearly all these programs have been shut down.

Besides Georgia Tech, the September government report also scrutinized University of California, Berkeley, and its relationship with a non-profit, Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, in Shenzhen.

In a statement, Dan Mogulof, an assistant vice chancellor at Berkeley, said they “take concerns about research security very seriously” and have “implemented new processes to foster and monitor foreign collaborations.”

They are currently bringing their relationship with the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute to an end, he added.

They would not be the first. In 2023, a law was passed in Florida that imposes restrictions on public universities and their ability to receive grants from educational institutes in China. Afterwards, the Marriott Tianjin China Program, a prominent hospitality management program affiliated with Florida International University, was closed down.

Abbigail Tumpey, a vice president at Georgia Tech, told RFA that their program in China, the Georgia Tech Shenzhen Institute, was established decades ago for educational purposes and had nothing to do with military research. Nevertheless, she and her colleagues at Georgia Tech all agreed that it was best to wind down their program in China.

The wind-down has impacted students. Several hundred are currently enrolled in the program in China. They will be able to complete their degrees, but they will be the last to do so. More broadly, the number of Chinese students in the U.S. has fallen from over 370,000 in 2019-2020 to fewer than 290,000 in 2022-2023. About 800 US students studied in China this year compared to 11,000 before the pandemic.

Zoë Altizer, a neuroscience major born in China who is studying at Georgia Tech’s main campus in Atlanta, said she believes that the university’s decision to pull back from China has been a consequence of “the ever-strange relationship between the two countries.”

Students and graduates of Florida universities have also been talking about the new restrictions on the schools and programs.

Annie Dong, 22, a native Floridian who spent part of her childhood in Fuzhou, China, was thrilled to find a “home,” as she put it, in the Chinese Language and Culture department at a progressive state university, New College of Florida, in Sarasota. She studied art and painted a mural on the wall of a campus gallery in the fall of 2022. The mural showed images of red-crowned cranes, birds with “strong symbolism in Chinese culture,” she said. “It means longevity and luck. It means you’re able to take on a long journey.”

Several other students also painted murals. Then, the atmosphere on campus changed amid tightening restrictions on university affiliations with institutes in China.

Around that time, the murals on the New College campus were painted over. But some, including Dong, felt that it was a symptom of a culture less welcoming to diverse students. “They said it was a way to beautify the campus,” Dong said. (A university spokesman declined to comment on the matter.)

“I felt like, really, where is home now, if they’re not welcoming color and diversity. How does that make sense?” she said.