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.
"Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sued the Trump administration in federal court on Wednesday, seeking to block a directive that would strip foreign college students of their visas if the courses they take this fall are entirely online," reported the New York Times. The lawsuit was successful, and the ICE policy was revoked.
"This is the latest of many setbacks to the more than 300,000 Chinese nationals studying in the U.S. in recent months. The COVID-19 pandemic had already become a nightmare for many of this cohort. Unsure of their legal status, their safety, and the future of face-to-face classes in the U.S., many Chinese students opted to return home," wrote Lily Qi.
"China's spying and attempts to steal U.S. technology are 'the greatest long-term threat' to America's economic vitality, Wray said."
The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency warned that if schools move to online-only education, students holding F-1 and M-1 visas “may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.” The move was part of an effort by the Trump administration to pressure schools to open for in-person classes in the fall.
Catherine X. Pan-Giordano, a partner at the international law firm Dorsey & Whitney LLP, tells The China Project that the Department of Justice has "created fear and distraction among the scientific community," and that the government has often penalized individual scientists and faculty members for failing to understand “complicated and sometimes confusing” disclosure rules.
Maggie Lewis, a law professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who focuses on criminal justice law in China and Taiwan, argues in a June 2020 draft paper that the U.S. Department of Justice’s ‘China Initiative’ risks undermining the department’s commitment to impartial justice.
"On behalf of OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, and the 162 undersigned organizations, we urge the President to rescind his divisive and discriminatory Presidential Proclamation on the Suspension of Entry as Nonimmigrants of Certain Students and Researchers from the People’s Republic of China, following the release of the SECURE CAMPUS Act."
On May 29, 2020, the White House issued a “Proclamation on the suspension of entry as nonimmigrants of certain students and researchers from the People’s Republic of China.” The new policy will make graduate study in the U.S. impossible for any Chinese national with even a vague connection to “military-civil fusion” in China. It could affect several thousand students, but universities are still waiting for details from the U.S. State Department.
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.
