John Moolenaar of the Select Committee on the CCP. Credit: X/committeeonccp
On March 19, U.S. Representative John Moolenaar, Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, sent a letter to six American universities demanding that they provide detailed personal, academic, and financial information about Chinese international students in STEM fields. Disguised as a routine inquiry into national security, the letter levies sweeping accusations. It claims that Chinese students “jeopardize” U.S. technological leadership, and labels the American student visa system as a “Trojan horse” for these students to steal intellectual property on behalf of the Chinese government. On top of this, the House also recently introduced the STOP CCP VISAs Act, a bill that, if passed, would ban student visas for all Chinese national students.
We must oppose this vilification of Chinese students and recognize it for what it is — an attack on global science.
The war on Chinese students is a war on global science
The Select Committee on the CCP letter and STOP CCP VISAs Act are part of a decade-long bipartisan campaign to surveil, vilify and push out Chinese researchers and students from American institutions. Under both Trump and Biden administrations, we’ve witnessed countless attacks on Chinese scholars and scientists based solely on their national origin — federal investigations with no evidence, layoffs, cancelled visas, and partnerships dismantled under political pressure.
Moolenaar’s letter escalates this campaign by implying that any Chinese national studying in a STEM field — especially those working in key research areas like AI, semiconductors, or aerospace — is potentially a spy. It makes absurd and xenophobic claims, such as the idea that the mere act of returning to China after graduation should be treated with suspicion. This logic dehumanizes thousands of students as geopolitical pawns rather than what they are: workers, researchers and colleagues striving to build a better future.
Repression at home, imperialism abroad
While the number of Chinese students at U.S. universities is shrinking, they make up the second largest international student population, totaling around 290,000 today — a significant drop from the 370,000 in 2019. Much of this decline can be traced to two things: Trump’s 2020 executive order canceling the student visas for thousands of graduate students and researchers in the U.S., and his China Initiative program which ran from 2018 to 2022. This program enlisted the FBI to persecute Chinese researchers in the U.S. for alleged espionage. The China Initiative was a program of racial profiling, and most of the cases ended up being dismissed with defendants accusing investigators of misconduct. But the China Initiative ruined the lives and reputations of many Chinese scientists and produced a climate of fear within the Chinese research community, and it’s the reason why so many of them left the U.S. and why more and more researchers are deciding to stay in China. While this initiative was canceled under the Biden administration, one of the cornerstones of Project 2025 is to revive this attack on Chinese researchers in the U.S. In turn, Republican lawmakers are working to bring it back. In September of 2024 the House passed a bill that would revive the China Initiative under a new name.
This escalation also fits into a broader pattern of repression targeting international students. Indian students — the largest international group — have been told to “self-deport” for campus activism, while students like Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk and Momodou Taal have faced repression for opposing the genocide in Palestine. Yet the attacks on Chinese nationals are distinct in that they are solely on the basis of national origin — regardless of political views, affiliations, or actions.
Indeed, they are a part of the U.S. strategy of containment, encirclement and suppression on China. In the context of this belligerence, U.S. universities have become both targets and willing enforcers of Cold War policies. Confucius Institutes — despite functioning primarily as language and culture exchange hubs — have been painted as infiltration centers and closed en masse. After federal agencies accused two Chinese neuroscientists at Emory University of “hiding Chinese ties” the university responded to the allegations by terminating them. A Chinese-American professor at Northwestern University who was a target of the China Initiative committed suicide after losing her lab due to unsubstantiated allegations. These are not isolated incidents, but casualties of an intensifying campaign to dismantle 40 years of scientific exchange.
Georgia Tech’s decision to end its research and educational partnerships in Tianjin and Shenzhen — citing alleged military ties and mounting congressional pressure — is another stark example of how academic institutions are quick to capitulate to imperialist priorities, severing valuable research collaborations in lockstep with Washington’s escalation. The hypocrisy of these institutions is glaring: schools like Georgia Tech are deeply enmeshed in U.S. military infrastructure, receiving nearly a billion in Department of Defense funding and conducting classified research. Yet, partnerships with Chinese universities are framed as threats, while direct collaboration with the Pentagon — an institution waging war across the globe — is treated as business as usual. Rather than resist the Cold War fervor in Washington, universities are helping enforce it.
U.S. officials try to demonize China as if it is on the warpath, but it is the United States that poses the greatest threat to world peace. In the last 30 years alone, the United States has launched 251 military interventions across the globe. In stark contrast, China has eradicated extreme poverty for more than 850 million people, and managed to overcome the legacy of colonialism and underdevelopment by reaching a level of moderate prosperity all while upholding the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.”
National security is a smokescreen for technological monopoly
The truth is, fears of “espionage” always seem to emerge at the precise moment when China makes strides in innovation. When Huawei led 5G infrastructure, it was banned. When Chinese firms began to challenge U.S. chip dominance, sanctions followed. Recently, DeepSeek’s advancements in generative AI have rattled Silicon Valley giants like OpenAI and Meta. These American companies once claimed to champion open source research, but are now working to limit access to truly open, affordable AI systems to maintain dominance.
This hypocrisy isn’t unique to tech. Despite publicly touting a commitment to mass adoption of sustainable vehicles, Tesla and Elon Musk advocated for tariffs to impede Chinese electric vehicles from entering the U.S. market once companies like BYD began outselling them globally. BYD — now the world’s top EV maker — remains effectively locked out of North America due to U.S. protectionist policies. Rather than celebrate affordable, widely available clean energy vehicles, the U.S. has weaponized trade policy to protect domestic monopolies and sabotage genuine progress.
The same oligarchs who endlessly preach the virtues of a “free market” are the first to sabotage Chinese researchers and industries when they begin to outcompete American firms.
Neoliberalism hollowed out higher ed — now they’re blaming foreign students
Moolenaar frames universities as having “prioritized financial incentives over national security” by admitting too many Chinese students. But this analysis is disingenuous. U.S. universities depend on international students, including those from China, precisely because decades of neoliberal austerity have hollowed out public funding for higher education.
Rather than reinvest in STEM education or make graduate research financially accessible to working-class students, university administrators rely on full-paying international students to keep programs afloat. Meanwhile, politicians decry “foreigners taking our spots” while doing nothing to fix the underfunded, overpriced, increasingly inaccessible U.S. education system. The crisis in STEM and literacy isn’t the result of foreign enrollment – it’s the result of a decades-long war on public education and a market-driven model of knowledge production.
Global collaboration, not repression, is what humanity needs
Our ruling class’s fixation on isolating and antagonizing China actively sabotages the kind of international cooperation needed to confront global crises.
While the U.S. hoarded vaccines, blocked WTO IP waivers, and treated global health as a geopolitical chess game during COVID-19, China took an alternative path: Through its vaccine internationalism, China donated or exported vaccines to over 100 countries, including those excluded from the global market due to sanctions or poverty. Cuba, despite a U.S. blockade, developed five vaccines of its own, exported them at cost, and partnered with China to create Pan-Corona: a joint vaccine aimed at defeating future variants. These were acts of international solidarity, not profit-seeking.
Venezuela, too, provides a powerful example of what global science cooperation can look like. In April 2024, Venezuela and China signed a sweeping agreement to develop joint scientific projects. Such collaborative efforts show how international alliances can foster sovereign, socially-oriented innovation.
Collaboration between the U.S. and China — two of the largest research and innovation hubs in the world — could offer humanity an opportunity to solve the pressing crises of our time: pandemics, climate change, AI ethics and more. But to those in power, shared progress is a threat. It undermines the need for endless militarization, sanctions and rivalry. It challenges the U.S. ruling class’ worldview based on zero-sum competition and global hegemony.
