US should stop toxic policy on academic exchanges

Once again, the US showed it's two-faced by denying over 500 Chinese students' visa applications to study in the US.

Of the affected students, a quarter had been awarded US scholarships and had received offers to pursue postgraduate studies as STEM majors at top US universities.

Though the Biden administration said in April it would ease restrictions on Chinese and other students traveling to the United States and most affected students submitted visa applications after President Joe Biden took office, the rejections were still based on the Trump-era Immigration and Nationality Act and Presidential Proclamation 10043, which suspends entry for Chinese students and researchers who Washington deems as being connected to China's "military-civil fusion strategy".

How hypocritical that the US pretends to hold an open attitude to international students while actually sticking to the wrong policy of suppressing Chinese students and scholars. Such a policy to sever academic exchanges will only release more political viruses and further poison the already severely damaged Sino-US ties.

Such a move not only harms the legitimate rights of the Chinese students, interrupting the normal education and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries, but also casts a shadow on US higher education.

China remained the largest source of international students in the US. There were over 372,000 Chinese graduate students and Optional Practical Training students in the US from 2019 to 2020, and this number has been increasing for the 16th consecutive year, according to the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit in New York.

No doubt the US administration's discrimination against Chinese students will prompt many Chinese families to remake their decisions after they feel the chill of the US's wrong policy. The policy will eventually deal a blow to the whole US education market for international students.

To play smart and wise, the US should stop using all kinds of excuses to restrict and suppress Chinese students, and create a healthy atmosphere for China-US people-to-people exchanges and educational cooperation.

The US-China relationship is chilly, and "trust deficits" should be mended. The key to increasing mutual confidence is rational dialogue and active communication. Only by establishing people-to-people exchanges for dialogue can the two countries avoid strategic misjudgment.

An effective favorable condition for Sino-US cultural and educational exchanges for coordination can be an antidote to the poison of the US political atmosphere. US politicians shouldn't destroy that.

The author is a writer with China Daily.