US-China ‘paranoia’ is ‘hurting universities and students’

Scholars are raising the alarm about growing losses to higher education inflicted by rivalry between the US and China.

Experts addressing Times Higher Education’s Asia Universities Summit expressed concern over the ongoing damage wreaked by political friction between the two global superpowers.

William Kirby, professor of China studies at Harvard University, said the countries’ relationship had unravelled, likening it to a bad marriage.

“We’ve been together a long time. We are intertwined culturally, economically…and this is a relationship that has children,” he said.

The “millions” of children were the Chinese students who have studied in the US, and their American counterparts who have gone to China, Professor Kirby noted.

Yet, despite what should be a common interest, the US-China relationship has degenerated into one of “mutual paranoia…mutual self-isolation” and protectionism, hurting both students and their institutions, he said.

“Any great research university today [that] is not open to talent from all corners of the world…is on a glide path to decline,” he told the summit, held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Ronnie Chan, one of Hong Kong’s major philanthropists to education, agreed that “there’s no winner” in the current geopolitical contest between the US and China.

“As we all know, already, research even in Hong Kong is heavily affected,” he said, adding that the US attitude towards China “erroneously” puts Hong Kong in the same category with Beijing.

In many ways, the island’s uncomfortable position mirrors that of Singapore, where universities must navigate complex politics to collaborate closely with counterparts in China as well as the US. Recently, the president of the National University of Singapore, Tan Eng Chye, warned that the rivalry between the world’s top superpowers could have negative repercussions for both – and those caught in the middle.

While research has been the conflict’s most obvious casualty, it is already beginning to have a significant effect on student mobility.

Ken Qu, director of the office of international cooperation at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), who spoke at a separate panel during the Hong Kong event, noted that a third of undergraduates from his institution used to go abroad to the US – a number than has now dropped to 12 per cent, despite the lifting of pandemic-era travel restrictions.

Although 50 students at USTC are eligible to get government-backed scholarships to study in the US, last year, only two of them received a visa, according to Professor Qu.

“I think everyone knows what’s going on,” he said. “It’s not because we don’t have enough money to support them or that the universities don’t want to recruit them…they just can’t get a visa.”

The uncertainty has “greatly affected” learners’ enthusiasm to study abroad, said Professor Qu. He called on the sector to lobby policymakers to continue US-China collaboration in research and education.

“This issue is going to take years,” he said. “It really needs the leaders of universities to talk to their governments.”

pola.lem@timeshighereducation.com