US needs Chinese students in humanities, not sciences: diplomat

Published June 25, 2024
FILE PHOTO: Kurt Campbell, US White House coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, talks with a group of guests including U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Executive Vice President and Head of International Affairs Myron Brilliant in Washington, US, May 12, 2022 —  Reuters
FILE PHOTO: Kurt Campbell, US White House coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, talks with a group of guests including U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Executive Vice President and Head of International Affairs Myron Brilliant in Washington, US, May 12, 2022 — Reuters

WASHINGTON: The United States should welcome more students from China, but to study the humanities rather than sciences, the second-ranked US diplomat said on Monday, noting that US universities are limiting Chinese students’ access to sensitive technology given security concerns.

Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said not enough Americans were studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics. He said the US needed to recruit more international students for those fields, but from India, an increasingly important US security partner, and not China.

For years, Chinese students have made up the largest foreign student body in the US and totalled nearly 290,000 in the 2022-23 academic year.

But some in academia and civil society argue that deteriorating US-China relations and concerns about theft of expertise, have derailed scientific cooperation and subjected Chinese students to unwarranted suspicion.

“I would like to see more Chinese students coming to the United States to study humanities and social sciences, not particle physics,” Campbell told the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

Campbell was asked about the China Initiative introduced by the Trump administration, intended to combat alleged Chinese espionage, which ended under the Biden administration after critics said it spurred racial profiling of Asian Americans.

Campbell said US universities had made “careful attempts” to support continuing higher education for Chinese students, but had also been “careful about the labs, some of the activities of Chinese students”.

“I do think it is possible to curtail and to limit certain kinds of access, and we have seen that generally, particularly in technological programmes across the United States,” he said.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2024

Opinion

Editorial

Ultimate price
Updated 02 Nov, 2024

Ultimate price

To dismantle culture of impunity for crimes against journalists, state must ensure that perpetrators do not go unpunished.
Mastung bombing
02 Nov, 2024

Mastung bombing

INSTABILITY continues to haunt Balochistan, as Friday morning’s bombing in Mastung has shown. At least nine...
Plane speak
02 Nov, 2024

Plane speak

DESPITE all its efforts to facilitate PIA’s privatisation, it seems the government only ended up being taken for a...
Seeking investment
Updated 01 Nov, 2024

Seeking investment

Foreign visits will be fruitless unless crucial structural, policy reforms directly affecting investors are focused.
State-backed terror
01 Nov, 2024

State-backed terror

OVER the past year or so, India’s reportedly malign activities in foreign countries have increasingly come under the radar, with
Shared crisis
01 Nov, 2024

Shared crisis

WITH Lahore experiencing unprecedented levels of smog, the Punjab government has announced a series of “green...