China Dependence Poses Existential Risk To US Universities

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Such national security concerns are sometimes brushed aside by academia and are viewed as illegitimate, or even as reactionary or xenophobic.

At the heart of this matter is money. Students from China and India compose more than half of the 1.1 million foreign students studying in the US. During the 2023–24 academic year, international students contributed more than $40 billion to the US economy.

With annual tuition at elite schools often exceeding $60,000 , these students fund research centers, laboratories, and faculty salaries. This revenue stream gives universities every reason to remain globally open, even if doing so occasionally creates tension between their priorities and national security.

More significantly, many of these institutions maintain formal research partnerships with Chinese universities tied to state and military entities.

Harvard, for instance, has collaborated with Tsinghua University, often referred to as China's MIT, on joint research on artificial intelligence, quantum physics, and biomedicine.

While billed as academic exchanges, many projects in these fields relate directly to China's civil-military fusion strategy, whereby breakthroughs in science serve Chinese economic development as well as military modernization.

These are not theoretical risks. They are playing out in real time. According to the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, about one-third of Chinese nationals who earn PhDs in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields in the US return home within five years. Many go on to work in high-priority sectors supporting China's strategic goals.

Kai-Fu Lee, a Carnegie Mellon Ph.D., led Google China before founding Sinovation Ventures, an AI-focused firm closely aligned with Beijing's national objectives. Jie Tang, a Cornell PhD, now leads major AI research initiatives at Tsinghua.

During my own fieldwork in China's aviation sector, I mentored two promising students, Kankan Xie and Jikuo Lu, through elite US graduate programs. One is now a professor at Peking University; the other works on AI at Meta but plans to return to China.

Both were grateful for the opportunities they found in the United States but made clear that their long-term goals were to support China's national development.

Faculty are not blind to this. Martin Widzer, who teaches at the University of Colorado Denver and at the International College Beijing, told me that many of his Chinese students were candid in their nationalist convictions. Several now attend elite US institutions, and many plan to return home, equipped with a world-class education and a strong sense of purpose.

Even more concerning is the growing trend of academic self-censorship. Scholars who rely on access to China or funding from Chinese sources often steer clear of politically sensitive topics such as Taiwan, Xinjiang, cyber espionage and technology theft.

A prominent China scholar declined to let me publish his comments, fearing that it could jeopardize his visa and access to archives. The pressure is real, and it is only growing.

As China scholar Ming Xia has noted, this kind of self-censorship undermines academic independence. When faculty or institutions depend on partnerships with authoritarian states, they risk shaping their research agendas to align more closely with the priorities of their funders, conducting experiments based on what is deemed acceptable rather than on the pursuit of truth.