US needs Chinese students in humanities and Indian students in sciences, says US diplomat

By Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States should welcome more students from China, but study humanities rather than sciences, the No. 2 U.S. diplomat said on Monday, noting that U.S. universities are limiting Chinese students’ access to sensitive technologies due to security concerns.

Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said not enough Americans are studying science, technology, engineering and math. He said the U.S. needs to recruit more international students into these fields, but from India — an increasingly important U.S. security partner — rather than China.

For years, Chinese students have constituted the largest foreign student body in the US and numbered 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 the theft of U.S. expertise have undermined 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, aimed at combating Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft, which ended under the Biden administration after critics said it encouraged racial profiling of Asian Americans.

Campbell said U.S. universities have made “careful attempts” to support continued higher education for Chinese students, but they have also been “careful about the labs and some of the Chinese student activities.”

“I think it is possible to restrict and limit certain types of access, and we have seen that across the board, particularly in technology programs in the United States,” he said.

Campbell said some suggested China was the only source to make up for the shortage of science students.

“I believe the biggest increase we need to see in the future would be a much larger number of Indian students coming to study at American universities in a variety of technologies and other areas.”

Campbell said the U.S. must be careful not to eliminate ties between China and the U.S., but officials in Beijing are largely to blame for any weakening of ties in academia, business or the nonprofit sector.

“It was really China that made it difficult for the types of activities that we would like to see sustained,” Campbell said, adding that foreign executives and philanthropists were cautious about long-term stays in China due to concerns about personal safety.

(Reporting by Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Rod Nickel)