As tensions with China rise, scientists at America’s leading universities complain of stalled research after crackdown at airports

Stopped at the border, interrogated on national security grounds, laptops and mobile phones checked, held for several hours, plans for future research shattered. ⠀

Earlier this month the Chinese embassy in Washington said more than 70 students “with legal and valid materials” had been deported from the US since July 2021, with more than 10 cases since November 2023. The embassy said it had complained to the US authorities about each case. ⠀

“The impact is huge,” says Qin Yan, a professor of pathology at Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut, who says that he is aware of more than a dozen Chinese students from Yale and other universities who have been rejected by the US in recent months, despite holding valid visas. Experiments have stalled, and there is a “chilling effect” for the next generation of Chinese scientists. ⠀

The refusals appear to be linked to a 2020 US rule that barred Chinese postgraduate students with links to China’s “military-civil fusion strategy”, which aims to leverage civilian infrastructure to support military development. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute thinktank estimates that 95 civilian universities in China have links to the defence sector.

Nearly 2,000 visas applications were rejected on that basis in 2021. But now people who pass the security checks necessary to be granted a visa by the State Department are being turned away at the border by CBP, a different branch of government.

“It is very hard for a CBP officer to really evaluate the risk of espionage,” said Dan Berger, an immigration lawyer in Massachusetts, who represents a graduate student at Yale who, midway through her PhD, was sent back from Washington’s Dulles airport in December, and banned from re-entering the US for five years. ⠀

Academics say that scrutiny has widened to different fields – particularly medical sciences – with the reasons for the refusals not made clear.

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  • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]
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    4927 days ago

    Just comical amounts of racism. I guess it’s only fitting that the US chase the braindrain it relies on to drive any productive sectors it hasn’t outsourced back to their home countries as it spirals into imperial decline.

  • Liz
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    3127 days ago

    Yeah I mean, pay your graduate students about twice as much and make them only work 40 hours a week. Then you won’t have to import labor from outside the county.

  • YEP [he/him]
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    3127 days ago

    X Edward Guo, a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University, said that part of the problem is that, unlike in the US, military research does sometimes take place on university campuses. “It’s not black and white … there are medical universities that also do military. But 99% of those professors are doing biomedical research and have nothing to do with the military.”.

    Us University’s don’t do military research

    Yes they do ???

    • @nekandro
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      1727 days ago

      Military research requires clearance which foreign nationals can’t get anyway.

      • @Arelin@lemmy.zip
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        27 days ago

        Lmao liberals getting mad at (in this case non-existent) “violations” of laws that only exist to protect the capitalist class is always funny

        Intellectual property shouldn’t exist in the first place; it kills millions of people every year from patented drugs, etc. and it did so in Africa during covid.

        • @Rinox@feddit.it
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          426 days ago

          While I agree that intellectual property has been abused over and over, especially in the last two decades, we need to remember the reason why patents became a thing, and that reason was to promote open research and cooperation.

          Without patents the only tool businesses had to protect and exploit their inventions and discoveries was secrecy, which creates a terrible environment for research, full of espionage and subterfuge and without a library of human inventions and research ready for anyone to take and build upon.

          It’s somewhat of a necessary evil, a carrot in order to incentivize businesses and individuals to share their research and their inventions, instead of keeping them to themselves in fear of someone else stealing them. It does have issues though, especially regarding the lack of a “fair” use of the monopoly the patent grants for it’s duration.

          And, again, I’m talking about patents. Copyright is a whole other can of worms, way worse in some ways.

        • MxM111
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          -1827 days ago

          Those drugs wouldn’t be developed in the first place, if there were no IP. The system is not ideal, but I would rather address its issues than destroy everything completely. When hous is on fire, the right thing is put out the fire, not to destroy the town.

          • @OurToothbrushM
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            2527 days ago

            Cuba literally developed vaccines without IP nonsense, your argument kinda rings hollow

            • MxM111
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              -927 days ago

              It is not impossible, but are you seriously want to compare pharmaceutical advancements of Cuba and US? You can even compare USSR and USA at the time. USSR medicine was significantly behind.

              • Match!!
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                1427 days ago

                Cuba has 3% of the population of the US. I think it is fair to say they have disproportionately more medical advancement than expected for their population and wealth level.

                • MxM111
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                  26 days ago

                  I am not sure “advancement per person” is right metric - the more advances the much harder to make those. This is why I was suggesting to compare it to USSR - fair comparison.

                • MxM111
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                  126 days ago

                  Source? I would like to see how cuban pharmaceuticals are more advanced than that in US. Until you show concrete proof, I will say this is made up statement.

          • The Uncanny Observer
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            2227 days ago

            Your comment is pretty ridiculous when you consider that multiple times in history, the scientists who invented vaccines or treatments that saved millions of people put those inventions into the public domain.

            The idea that without capitalism, there is no innovation, is ridiculous. Capitalism is a fairly new idea in history, you’ve just fallen for the propaganda.

          • @Arelin@lemmy.zip
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            1227 days ago

            When hous is on fire, the right thing is put out the fire

            The fire is the capitalist laws like IP; the “hous” is a country’s development. So yes, the fire should be put out.

          • @Omega_Haxors
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            27 days ago

            and because they’re on an instance without downvotes they’re only going to see the 7 upvotes they did get. It’s 2024 why are people still buying into capitalist realism?? All the guys pushing for it have all moved on to pushing pedo-nazi shit you should be better than this.

            • wildncrazyguy
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              -226 days ago

              If you think all capitalists are nazis then your ideology has blinded you.

              • @Omega_Haxors
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                26 days ago

                People pushing for capitalist realism absolutely are, and usually the nazism comes secondary to the pedophilia with those types.

                Also, relevant meme:

                • wildncrazyguy
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                  026 days ago

                  Never said communism is bad, friend, just that it’s not a good idea to be consumed by any ideological framework - that’s how you become a zealot or worse, an enabler to someone who corrupts the cause.

          • @hglman
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            527 days ago

            People hate saving others, you really have to give them so many incentives to care. /S

      • @Arcturus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1327 days ago

        Yeah, it’s terrible how capitalists and their megacorps might not profit as much if that’s happening…

        (which it isn’t these days btw; countries like the US and China violated bullshit british IP laws when industrializing, and they don’t really need to do that once they are industrialized)

        • @ed_cock@feddit.de
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          27 days ago

          You are making it sound like China and its large corporations weren’t also very interested in profits and market domination.

          • @Arcturus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            27 days ago

            That’s included in the “industrializing” part, no?

            Under capitalism, industrialization and therefore “market domination” realistically means ignoring the laws meant to keep competition down.

    • @nekandro
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      1327 days ago

      Stealing IP by… Publishing their own work on publicly accessible journals and conferences? The absolute horror. You don’t steal public IP, you gain (or lose) the rights to use it.

      • @UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee
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        -327 days ago

        I would have no problem if everything was open sourced. However, Chinese capitalists steal this data, make it proprietary and profit off of it themselves. This is the “horror”.

        • @nekandro
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          1227 days ago

          It’s public research. How exactly do you propose to make public research proprietary? The university holds the rights.

  • @forgotmylastusername
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    2027 days ago

    Same shit different era. Always gotta be persecuting somebody.

    Also when Silicon Valley copies and steals they get praised as revolutionary innovators.

    • @knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
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      1227 days ago

      The Silicon Valley thieves are just copying and stealing from over a century of US industrial strategy.

  • @GnuLinuxDude
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    1226 days ago

    I foremost hope that the United States can regain a shred of its diginity and stop treating every foreigner like a criminal, stop funding a genocide, stop killing its own population with guns, have a decent social services program, etc. This is obviously a fantasy, so I secondarily hope these researchers can go back to China and do good work, where they won’t be treated as second-tier human beings.

  • @Omega_Haxors
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    1026 days ago

    snk typical Chinese tyranic- … what do you mean it’s America doing it??

  • @doubtingtammy
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    826 days ago

    Not surprising when you look at all the anti-China stuff coming out of mainstream liberal orgs and communities.

  • ButtBidet [he/him]
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    726 days ago

    The Australian Strategic Policy Institute thinktank estimates that 95 civilian universities in China have links to the defence sector.

    Oh, the think tank with the guy who gets satellite images of schools and says that it’s definitely a Uighur concentration camp, the one funded by the military.

  • @umbrella
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    527 days ago

    pro china, anti us stuff coming from the guardian??