Chinese Students Studying In the U.S.

Last week I attended a talk about China. The speaker was excellent and very analytical when discussing the economy of China, the Hong Kong situation, and the tariff battle between President Trump and China. In the “tariff war” he thought that Trump held all the cards, and thought that China would try to hold off until after the 2020 election . . . if they could, with the hope of getting a better deal if Trump lost. 

However, I have an idea to help President Trump have even more leverage, and I hope that he reads this blog more than his usual once a week!                                                                                              

Consider the following numbers from an article written by Phyllis Schlafly in Eagle Forum back in 2016:                                                                                                              The number  of Chinese and other foreign students who go to college in the U.S. is truly mind-boggling. Of the nearly 1 million people living in the United States on F-1 student visas, about 360,000 are from China. These Chinese mainland students are not gaining an acceptance of democracy in general nor an admiration for the U.S.A. They are here to take STEM. courses, and computer courses so that they can bring this knowledge back to China – obviously to China’s advantage.

What is the reason for this huge increase of students from foreign countries, especially China, who are admitted to study on American campuses. Again, as I have said before, if there is a question whose answer seems to defy logic . . .always follow the money!   At University of California, San Diego (U.C.S.D.) in 2017 the tuition for in-state students was $13,646, whereas the tuition for out-of-state or foreign students was $40,327, and I would assume that this cost differential of $26,681 per year would be the same at all of the different University of California (U.C.) campuses. For just U.C.S.D. alone with its over 5000 Chinese students, this amounts to almost $68 million per year! And who do you think benefits from this largesse? Not those in-state students who did not get into a U.C. school, because a mainland Chinese student took his/her place, but rather the State of California and/or the U.C. System.

As almost everyone is aware, President Trump and China are presently facing off in a tariff war. With regard to this “tariff war” and the myriad of Chinese students studying in the U.S., my suggestion to President Trump is two-fold:

First: Stop issuing all new Chinese F-1 student visas immediately . . . zero, nada, turn off the spigot! When one thinks about the number of new mainland Chinese students studying in the U.S. every year, who will be the winners? The obvious answer . . . The winners will be the thousands of high school graduates who are losing out to foreigners when it comes to getting into college. Here in California, the lure of higher tuition has tempted state colleges to lower their admission standards for foreign and other out-of-state students. The California State Auditor recently found that the average SAT scores and grades of out-of-state students were lower than those of in-state students, and that state universities had rejected 4,500 Californians whose test scores and grades were good enough for out-of-state and foreign students. 

California has more U.S.-born Chinese students than any other state, but its public colleges nevertheless admit huge numbers of students from mainland China, including in 2016, 1,200 at University of California, Berkeley, up from 47 in 2006, and 2,200 at University of California San Diego (U.C.S.D.), up from 70 in 2006 – at present U.C.S.D. has approximately 5227 total students from mainland China, up from about 500 a decade ago.  Of course, the Democrats will howl at this suggestion, and California will sue! 

However, California high school graduating seniors are not alone when talking about their potential spots as in-state students, being taken by mainland Chinese students. For example, in 2016, the University of Illinois had 5,000 Chinese students on its Champaign-Urbana campus, compared with less than 100 a decade ago, and students from the People’s Republic of China made up a tenth of the freshman class in 2015 at that campus.

Second: At the end of the present semester begin tariffs on college and postgraduate tuition for mainland Chinese students. These tariffs would start at 100% of the Chinese student’s college tuition in January 2020, and would double each year thereafter . . . until China agrees to President Trump’s tariff compromise.

This will, in essence, give those in power in China three months to decide what to do with these “tuition tariffs.” Either they compromise and agree to what Trump wants as far as trade is concerned, or they will begin paying double (100% tariff) for those enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities. In essence, as of January, 2020, this means  “double tuition” for the almost 400,000 students studying in the U.S. by the first of January, 2020. These “tuition tariffs” will narrow the trade deficit between the two countries.