Tighter US visas and growing distrust of Chinese researchers will only boost China’s talent pool, at America’s expense
- US visa restrictions provide an opportunity for Beijing to promote a more diversified, balanced and collaborative approach to higher education. McCarthy-era suspicion will simply drive Chinese academics home, thus enriching China’s tech programme
First, diversify away from US universities. American universities have some of the best engineering programmes in the world, and 80 per cent of Chinese students looking at overseas education still choose English-speaking countries. But seven of the world’s top 10 universities for engineering and technology are not American, and some of the strongest university engineering programmes are in Switzerland, Germany, Japan and South Korea, regions already attracting more Chinese students in recent years.
Beijing could grant more scholarships for graduate programmes in non-English languages and encourage science and engineering students preparing for further study or joint research to learn a second foreign language, such as German, Japanese or Korean.
