Tracking paranoid rhetoric, visa restrictions, and the targeted policing of China-connected research, which combine to create a hostile atmosphere for Chinese people in the U.S.
“Faculty members, post-docs, research staff and students tell me that, in their dealings with government agencies, they now feel unfairly scrutinized, stigmatized and on edge – because of their Chinese ethnicity alone.”
—MIT President L. Rafael Reif, June 25, 2019.
Since early 2018, the American immigration and justice system has appeared to target Chinese students, and ethnically Chinese researchers, with paranoid rhetoric, visa restrictions, and targeted policing and politicization of China-connected research. Together, these three trends comprise the primary — but not only — components of the current atmosphere of suspicion and distrust in America of not just Beijing, but Chinese people as a whole.
This tool tracks rising Sinophobia in the U.S. Click on the filters to view different categories of Sinophobia-related developments, including Responses to Sinophobia, like the letter by the MIT President cited above.
Read about why The China Project launched this Sinophobia Tracker, in the words of our Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Goldkorn.
On May 28, 2020, Senators Tom Cotton and Marsha Blackburn and Representative David Kustoff, also of Tennessee, introduced legislation that would bar Chinese nationals from all STEM graduate-level programs in the U.S., Inside Higher Ed reports.
"The plan would be the first designed to bar the access of a category of Chinese students, who, over all, form the single largest foreign student population in the United States," the New York Times reported.
On August 29, 2019, the president of Arizona State University wrote a letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security to express his “serious concern” about the unexplained denial of entry of nine Chinese undergraduate students, Sixth Tone reports.
Chinese designer Xiaojuan Yang, founder of independent label I Love Pretty, and her team have been denied visas, the South China Morning Post reported. The news comes as the number of Chinese tourists traveling to the U.S. has declined recently amid tensions between the White House and Beijing.
Franklin Tao (陶丰 Táo Fēng), a University of Kansas researcher was indicted for allegedly hiding that he was working full-time for a Chinese university. But as Bloomberg points out, “a web search shows that…his dual Kansas and China ties are disclosed in at least two U.S.-funded research papers published last year, as well as in several Chinese-language websites easily translatable online.”
“UC campuses from San Diego to Berkeley are reporting that Chinese students and scholars are encountering visa delays, federal scrutiny over their research activities, and new restrictions on collaboration with China and Chinese companies.”
"Beijing’s pointed warning on Monday that Chinese students should reassess their prospects for obtaining U.S. visas amid heightened tensions between the two countries is raising concerns in the American academic community," reported the South China Morning Post.
On June 3, 2019, a Chinese Ministry of Education notice said that Chinese students in the U.S. are facing restrictions and difficulties with visas that are affecting their ability to complete their studies, and warned both students and scholars to be aware of increased risk when going to the U.S.
The South China Morning Post found that some Chinese university students have been stuck in limbo as the waiting time for visas grows longer and the US government demands more information.
