Issue 1 October 2020

news 5
the pending fate of
international chinese
students in america
Worsening U.S.-China
relations in addition to
the pandemic make
the fate of international
Chinese students
uncertain as they pursue
education thousands of
miles apart from their
family and homeland
By MELODY GUI ‘21
With the pandemic, the racial
unrest and protests, the
wildfires, the tornadoes,
and the election, 2020 has
been a strange year for many Americans.
Chinese citizens living in the U.S. experienced
additional challenges this year on
top of everything else.
Depending on whether or not you are
an avid reader of international relations
news — or how closely you’ve been following
the whole Trump-is-going-to-ban-
TikTok news because it is a matter of huge
concern to you — you may have heard
about the worsening U.S.-China relations
this year.
With
fundamen-
holding a view that
celebrates the value
of intellectual and
cultural exchanges.
In May the
Trump administration
announced its
plans to revoke the
visas of thousands of
graduate students and
researchers in the
U.S. who have
military
ties. But
what constitutes
a
military
tie? It
is not
clearly
de-
college because he
was worried that it
would be very difficult
for him to
apply to American
medical schools as
a Chinese citizen.
This is not a
rare case. The
majority of Chinese
families
who send
their children
to
study
students’ at Baldwin — simply want to secure
a better future for their daughters.But
now we face growing scrutiny from the
U.S. government and live under the fear
that we might be expelled from school and
forced to leave the country if we choose to
study a major that could be considered a
threat to America’s national security.
For international Chinese students in
the U.S., 2020 has been especially hard.
On top of cultural differences and the
language barrier from being in a foreign
country, many international Chinese students
now face American xenophobia, the
uncertainty of their future in this country,
the dilemma of staying or
leaving, and the overwhelming
anxiety
from seeing the relations
between their
home country and
the U.S. continue
to intensify day by
day.
Many international
Chinese stu-
tal differences in political ideologies,
U.S.-China relations have never been particularly
good, but they have continued to
sour and hit the lowest point in decades this
year amid the pandemic. Some new sources,
such as The New York Times, CNBC,
and The Washington Post, even go as far
as to claim that the U.S. and China have
started a new Cold War.
As tensions between the governments
of the two countries continue to escalate,
many Chinese citizens and immigrants in
the U.S. are suffering its consequences.
There are many examples of recent events
that signal the intensifying relations between
U.S. and China, such as an ongoing
trade war that has lasted for more than two
years, President Trump blaming China for
the pandemic and calling it the “China virus,”
the battle over technology, and a diplomatic
escalation in July that started with
the U.S. ordering China to close its consulate
in Houston.
Of all the Trump administration’s decisions
on the Beijing front, the one that
has affected Chinese students who are currently
in the U.S. the most was their initial
expulsion from the U.S. if they didn’t have
any in-person classes.
American universities have pushed
back against the administration’s move,
fined,
and
this
r u l e
could be interpreted
in a broad sense, imposing
further educational
restrictions on
Chinese students who
come to the U.S. for the
purpose of obtaining a
good education.
These restrictions
have a wider impact
than it seems. For example,
as STEM students
are more susceptible
targets of these
restrictions than students
who study the humanities,
many Chinese
high school students applying
to colleges in the
U.S. are now reconsidering
their intended major.
A Chinese friend of
mine who is a freshman
at Duke Kunshan University
told me he withheld
from taking the pre-med track
in
abroad
in the
U.S. are
middle-class
households,
with one or
both parents
working to
pay the kid’s
full-priced
tuition, since
most U.S.
colleges do
not provide
financial
aid to
international
students.
The mindset that
education can change
one’s future is pervasive
in China and is
deep rooted in the
minds of Chinese
parents. Most Chinese
parents who
send their children
to the U.S. alone
— families such
as mine and all the
other international
dents at Baldwin are here by themselves
while their parents are thousands of miles
away.
Just recently the Trump administration
ordered the ban of WeChat, the biggest
social media platform in China with 1.2
billion users worldwide, and made real the
prospect that a 14-year-old Chinese student
at an American high school could lose their
source of live communication with their
parents in China.
Fortunately, the ban on WeChat was
temporarily put to a halt as a judge blocked
the ban with a preliminary injunction. But
an appeal from the Trump administration is
still pending, like the fate of Chinese students
in the U.S.
While we can certainly sit and ponder
if globalism is on the fall and nationalism
on the rise, having an awareness and understanding
of the circumstances faced by
your fellow international Chinese classmates
will help continue to make Baldwin
the inclusive, warm, and kind community
that we are.
Graphics and design by Maggie Song ‘21