U.S. needs Chinese students in humanities, Indian students for sciences, U.S. diplomat says
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said not enough Americans were studying STEM fields, and the U.S. should recruit international students from India, not China.
The U.S. should welcome more students from China, but to study the humanities rather than sciences, the second-ranked U.S. diplomat said on Monday, noting that U.S. universities are limiting Chinese students’ access to sensitive technology given security concerns.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said not enough Americans were studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics. He said the U.S. needed to recruit more international students for those fields, but from India — an increasingly important U.S. security partner — not China.
For years, Chinese students have made up the largest foreign student body in the U.S. and totaled nearly 290,000 in the 2022/23 academic year. But some in academia and civil society argue that deteriorating U.S.-China relations and concerns about theft of U.S. expertise, have derailed scientific cooperation and subjected Chinese students to unwarranted suspicion.
“I would like to see more Chinese students coming to the United States to study humanities and social sciences, not particle physics,” Campbell told the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank.
Campbell was asked about the China Initiative introduced by the Trump administration, intended to combat Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft, which ended under the Biden administration after critics said it spurred racial profiling of Asian Americans.
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