By Laurie Chen and Larissa Liao
BEIJING (Reuters) -Chinese students with offers from U.S. universities expressed despair after Washington promised to start “aggressively” revoking Chinese student visas and ordered U.S. missions abroad to stop scheduling new student visa appointments.
If applied to a broad segment of the 277,000 Chinese students already at U.S. colleges, the move could disrupt a major source of income for universities and a crucial pipeline of talent for U.S. technology companies as the Trump administration pursues its hardline immigration agenda.
“It’s pretty absurd. It doesn’t seem like something that should happen these days. I scrolled social media and felt quite anxious seeing other people’s reactions,” said Chen, 22, who has a postgraduate offer to study a humanities subject from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
“Although my major is not sensitive, my visa application process hasn’t started yet and my course begins in early August.”
Chen, who lives in the southwestern megacity of Chengdu, is prepared to defer her studies for a term if the visa doesn’t come through in time. She preferred not to share her full name for privacy reasons.
“If I really can’t go to the U.S., I may take up an offer from the UK’s London School of Economics,” she said.
Reuters reported that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio asked his department to pause the scheduling of student visa appointments until the department issues updated guidance on social media vetting of applicants.
The news set off a wave of confusion and despair on China’s Instagram-like platform RedNote, as incoming students scrambled to book the last remaining visa interview slots and others complained that they could no longer book.
Wu said she stayed up until 3 a.m. on Wednesday frantically refreshing the webpage until she managed to snag a precious mid-June interview slot at the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai.
“At nearly midnight I saw the news and immediately started booking, the page crashed several times,” she told Reuters.
The 29-year-old biology student, who preferred not to share her full name for privacy reasons, has an offer from the University of Minnesota Duluth and no back-up plan if her visa is rejected.
The cable, signed by Rubio, said previously scheduled appointments may proceed but did not specify when the interview booking system would resume. Nor did Rubio specify when the visa revocations would begin.
“The Department’s scheduling of nonimmigrant visa interview appointments is dynamic,” a State Department spokesperson said in response to Reuters’ questions about the suspension of appointments.
“Visa applicants may continue to submit applications. Consular sections constantly adjust their schedules to allow for sufficient time to fully vet the cases before them.”
The spokesperson added that the Trump administration was focused on “upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process.”
RUNNING OUT OF TIME
The announcement comes at a critical period in the international student application process, as many young people prepare to travel to the U.S. in August to find accommodation and settle in before term starts.
“I was super looking forward to starting my university life but then all this happened,” said a Beijing high school senior with a media studies offer from Ohio State University, who declined to give her name for privacy reasons.
“I still need 1-2 months to apply for my visa, term starts soon and I have no time left, it’s really a disaster out of nowhere and really unfair to international students.”
In their posts on RedNote, a few Chinese social media users also reported additional scrutiny of their listed social media accounts from U.S. consular officials during visa interviews this week.
In Beijing, the foreign ministry condemned the measures against Chinese students and said it had lodged protests with the U.S.
“The U.S. side, using ideology and national security as an excuse, irrationally revoked Chinese international student visas,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a briefing on Thursday.
“Its politically discriminatory practices pierce through the so-called freedom of speech it has always flaunted, this will only further damage its international image and reputation.”
China is also at the epicentre of Trump’s global trade war that has roiled financial markets, upended supply chains and fuelled risks of a global economic downturn. The decision to cancel Chinese student visas is happening despite a recent pause in the U.S.-China trade dispute.
International students – 54% of them from India and China – contributed more than $50 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
“It is superpower suicide to stop the best foreign minds from coming to the United States and using their talents to propel American prosperity and technological advantage,” Rush Doshi, a former Biden administration China official and assistant professor at Georgetown University, wrote on X on Wednesday.
“The iron fist has come down,” wrote an anonymous Chinese PhD student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison on RedNote on Thursday.
“The good days are over and a new round of hard times will begin for international students.”
(Reporting by Laurie Chen and Larissa Liao in Beijing; Additional reporting by Nicoco Chan in Shanghai; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
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