DON'T MISS: New episode of the Sphere Podcast!

In this week's conversation, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Publisher of Sphere Media, interviews Yoram Hazony. Dr Hazony is best known as the founder of the National Conservative Conference, which is held under the auspices of his Edmund Burke Foundation. He is also the President of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, and the author of numerous books, including "The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture," "The Virtue of Nationalism," and "Conservatism: A Rediscovery." Pascal and Yoram discuss a number of topics, starting with: what is national conservatism, why do we need to append a modifier to conservatism, why we have this strange phenomenon of an "internationale of nationalists," how nationalist movements can foster competent elites, and finally whether you should send your kids to elite schools or not, and if not, what should you do instead.

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Chinese Exchange Students Considered Bad

The good folks at the Center for Immigration Studies recently published an article by George Fishman, tied to President Trump's recent promise to more-than-double the number of Chinese students in the US to 600,000. The thesis is stark but compelling: the massive influx of students from the PRC into American universities is not simply an educational exchange, but a calculated component of the CCP's strategy to achieve military and technological superiority over the United States.

At present, nearly 280,000 Chinese nationals study in the US, comprising about one-quarter of the entire foreign student population, with over half in engineering, computer science, and other STEM fields.

As the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has documented, Beijing has constructed a sprawling ecosystem to co-opt students and scholars abroad. These individuals, often funded by state-linked scholarships, are incentivized, and, often, pressured, to return home with knowledge and research that can be repurposed for military or dual-use applications.

Fishman's article traces this problem back decades. Already in the early 2000s, US policymakers recognized that Chinese students and scientists were being deliberately placed abroad to acquire sensitive technologies. What has changed since then is the scale and sophistication of Beijing’s efforts. Today, entire programs exist to monitor Chinese students overseas, cultivate informants, and channel their expertise back to China. This machinery reflects what the CCP calls, chillingly, "military-civil fusion."

The risks are not theoretical. From 2011 to 2018, more than 90 percent of U.S. Department of Justice economic espionage cases involved China. This includes theft of intellectual property in fields ranging from advanced semiconductors to aerospace design.

Visa liberalization during the Bush and Obama years assumed that greater engagement would gradually liberalize China. Instead, it turbocharged Beijing’s ability to prepare for confrontation with the United States. As Fishman points out, expanding enrollment to 600,000 Chinese students would totally overwhelm campus security protocols and US counterintelligence ability to keep track of all but a small fraction.

To be clear, nobody believes that every Chinese student is a spy. The CCP has built a system in which any student can be conscripted into serving state interests. Before receiving passports, Chinese nationals are often questioned by security services and "sensitized" to intelligence needs, including through threats to their family. Beijing does not ask for voluntary loyalty; it demands it. Many of these students may be victims as well.

Which is why the canards of "xenophobia" or "racism" are so absurd. Nobody is accusing people of Chinese descent of intrinsically being spies. They are simply noting the reality that China is currently under the yoke of a totalitarian and hostile system of government that means that there are factual, practical, rational reasons to treat these risks as serious.

President Trump's gambit is therefore folly. At minimum, restrictions should be tightened on visas for postgraduate and postdoctoral students in sensitive STEM fields. But really, all PRC student visas should be revoked and none should be granted in the future.

The fact that it would certainly bankrupt a number of American universities, as Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick has pointed out, is, of course, just killing two birds with one stone.