US targeting only 1% of Chinese students over security concerns: White House official

A White House official said that the Trump administration is targeting only one per cent of the 400,000 Chinese students in the United States in a bid to stop Beijing from gathering US technology. Matt Pottinger, the deputy White House national security adviser, told an online event, hosted by the Ronald Reagan Institute, that the administration is following a “surgical approach.”

“President Trump has taken action to target roughly one per cent of that massive number, to target military-affiliated Chinese researchers who are in some cases here under false pretences or even false identities,” he said.

Pottinger said the vast majority of Chinese students were welcome, adding that other cases involve those who have come to the US to gain access to “technologies that would be useful to Chinese military advancement or to the repression of their own people.” He stressed that the overwhelming majority of Chinese students were “people that we’re glad to have here, and many will stay here and start great businesses.”

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Earlier, the US State Department had confirmed that it revoked the visas of more than 1,000 Chinese students under a presidential proclamation signed in May. A State Department spokesperson had said that more than 1,000 people were deemed as “high-risk graduate students and research scholars” under the proclamation and therefore ineligible for US visa.

The proclamation states that Chinese authorities use some of their students, mostly post‑graduate students and post-doctorate researchers, to operate as non-traditional collectors of intellectual property. According to the proclamation, students and researchers associated with China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are at high risk of being exploited or co-opted by Chinese authorities and provide particular cause for concern.

'Political persecution'

China accused the United States of “political persecution and racial discrimination” after the US confirmed it has revoked the visas of more than 1,000 Chinese students. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian called on the United States to immediately stop using all kinds of pretexts to restrict and suppress Chinese students for no reason. 

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