‘Good days are over’: Chinese students despair as US cracks down on visas
“It’s pretty absurd. It doesn’t seem like something that should happen these days. I scrolled social media and felt quite anxious seeing other people’s reactions,” said Chen, 22, who has a postgraduate offer to study a humanities subject from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
“Although my major is not sensitive, my visa application process hasn’t started yet and my course begins in early August.”
Chen, who lives in the southwestern megacity of Chengdu, is prepared to defer her studies for a term if the visa doesn’t come through in time. She preferred not to share her full name for privacy reasons.
“If I really can’t go to the U.S., I may take up an offer from the UK’s London School of Economics,” she said.
Reuters reported that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio asked his department to pause the scheduling of student visa appointments until the department issues updated guidance on social media vetting of applicants.
The news set off a wave of confusion and despair on China’s Instagram-like platform RedNote, as incoming students scrambled to book the last remaining visa interview slots and others complained that they could no longer book.
Wu said she stayed up until 3 a.m. on Wednesday frantically refreshing the webpage until she managed to snag a precious mid-June interview slot at the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai.
“At nearly midnight I saw the news and immediately started booking, the page crashed several times,” she told Reuters.
The 29-year-old biology student, who preferred not to share her full name for privacy reasons, has an offer from the University of Minnesota Duluth and no back-up plan if her visa is rejected.
RUNNING OUT OF TIME
US politics live: America to ‘aggressively revoke’ Chinese student visas
The US says it will “aggressively revoke visas” of Chinese students, including those with “connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.
Welcome to our live coverage of US politics.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced the US will “begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.
It came as Elon Musk confirmed his official exit from his Donald Trump’s administration, after leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in a controversial effort to reduce federal spending.
The billionaire, whose time as a “Special Government Employee” was limited by statute, took to X to thank President Trump “for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending”. But the Tesla CEO, in a rare split with Mr Trump, earlier publicly criticised the President’s “big, beautiful” spending bill.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Mr Musk said.
Meanwhile, America’s International Court of Trade, a federal-level court which governs America’s interactions with international trade laws, has ruled that Mr Trump’s executive orders unilaterally imposing tariffs on other countries are illegal.
That means most — not all — of Mr Trump’s tariffs are now null and void, pending an appeal from the Trump administration.
The court’s ruling notes that the US Constitution gives Congress, not the President, “the exclusive powers to lay and collect ‘taxes, duties, imposts and excises’ and to ‘regulate commerce with foreign nations’”.
The judges have “set aside” certain tariffs that were specifically challenged by several American states, run by Mr Trump’s opposition party, the Democrats. Those “tariff orders will be vacated and their operation permanently enjoined”, they say.
The Trump administration has immediately appealed the decision.
US to begin revoking Chinese student visas
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced the US will “begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.
Mr Rubio said in a brief statement on Wednesday that the State Department would work with the Department of Homeland Security to “aggressively revoke visas”.
“We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong,” he said.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many students would be affected. A total of 277,398 Chinese studied in the US in the 2023-24 school year, according to a State Department-sponsored annual survey by the Institute of International Education (IIE).
Trump administration decries ‘judicial coup’
Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff in the White House, Stephen Miller, has described the International Trade Court’s decision as a “judicial coup”.
“The judicial coup is out of control,” Mr Miller wrote on social media a short time ago. He’s widely seen as Mr Trump’s top policy adviser, and the architect of the President’s anti-immigrant policies in particular.
Former prosecutor Elie Honig, now a legal analyst on American TV, was not quite so dismissive of the trade court’s decision.
“This is a fully legitimate federal court,” he told CNN.
‘Behave themselves’: Trump blasts Harvard
Donald Trump has continued his attacks on Harvard University, arguing the Ivy League institution should have a cap on the number of foreign students it admits.
“Harvard has to show us their lists,” Mr Trump said on Wednesday.
“They have foreign students, about 31 per cent of their students are foreign-based, almost 31 per cent. We want to know where those students come… Are they troublemakers? What countries do they come (from)?”
Harvard has said international students only make up about a quarter of its students.
European businesses have never been this gloomy about China
BEIJING — European business optimism about China has hit its lowest on record – worse than during the pandemic — due to slower growth and geopolitical worries.
A record 73% of respondents in the EU Chamber of Commerce in China’s annual survey said doing business in the Asian country has become more difficult in the past year, marking a new high for a fourth-straight year.
That’s just one of the several record lows in sentiment found in the annual survey, which has been published since 2004. The latest study released Wednesday, covered 503 respondents in January and February.
“Companies are really feeling the squeeze, being pessimistic, but again finding very compelling supply chains in China that necessitate a continued presence [in] the Chinese market,” Jens Eskelund, president of the chamber, told reporters this week.
Still, that doesn’t mean business confidence is close to returning.
“We haven’t seen an inflection point yet,” Eskelund said. “A lot of it boils down to uncertainty.”
The survey reflected how challenges for foreign businesses in China have largely increased since the pandemic lockdown in 2022 disrupted supply chains. While local brands have become more competitive, overall consumer demand has remained lackluster amid the real estate slump and uncertainty in the job market.
Cosmetics companies were particularly hit. The industry blamed a drop in local demand and reported a 45% drop in revenue in 2024 from a year before — only the second decline in the past decade, according to the chamber’s report.
On the other hand, aviation and aerospace were the rare industries saying that doing business in China became easier.
Slower growth is diminishing China’s attractiveness relative to other markets.
A record low of only 12% of respondents were optimistic about profitability in China in the coming two years, while the fewest on record ranked the country as a top destination for future investments. Another record low of 38% of respondents said they planned to expand in China over the coming year.
And while Beijing has announced efforts to improve conditions for foreign investment, many challenges remain.
A record 63% of respondents said they missed business opportunities in China last year due to market access restrictions and regulatory barriers. Medical device businesses who responded said European companies experienced discrimination due to public procurement practices favoring domestic players.
The scale of pessimism echoed an annual survey of U.S. companies in China released in late January that showed a record share of American businesses were accelerating plans to relocate manufacturing or sourcing.
Meanwhile, 53% of respondents said they would increase their investments in China if more action was taken to improve local market access.
hold a summit in Beijing in July as both try to strengthen bilateral ties amid higher U.S. tariffs. The EU is China’s second-largest trading partner on a regional basis.
‘Enduring pitfalls’: China’s chilling warning over controversial Darwin Port deal
China has issued a chilling warning for one Australian city over a controversial port deal that has left many feeling tense.
China has again warned Australia against plans to take back its strategic Port of Darwin, threatening the move would result in “enduring pitfalls for the country.”
“If the Darwin Port issue is further politicised, or forcibly taken back under the pretext of so-called “national security,” it would become another negative typical case that affects the healthy and stable development of China-Australia relations,” an anonymous editorial in the Chinese Communist Party-controlled Global Times states.
The strategic economic and defence facility was leased in 2015 for $506 million to the Australian subsidiary of a privately owned Chinese company, the Landbridge Group.
The 99-year deal was cemented by the then Country Liberal Northern Territory Government.
The geopolitical fallout was immediate.
The White House complained it had not been consulted. After all, its freshly committed US Marine presence in the Northern Territory relied on the port for support.
Australia’s regional neighbours raised their eyebrows: Hadn’t Canberra been pressuring them to reject significant Chinese infrastructure money?
Ten years later, both Labor and the Coalition went to the May 2025 Federal Election promising to take back control.zi
Military facilities across the Top End are being upgraded “to enhance the ability of the Australian Defence Force to project force,” Brigadier Matthew Quinn said at a sod-turning ceremony earlier this month.
“These critical upgrades follow recent works to enhance the main runway and taxiways, improving the capacity, security and resilience of RAAF Base Darwin.”
It was just one $160 million piece of a massive international defence buildup across northern Australia.
The cause: China’s assertive territorial ambitions.
“Taking back the Port of Darwin from Landbridge Group would also symbolise a dangerous shift from commercial cooperation to military development,” the Global Times warns.
“The move of “de-Sinicisation” aims to remove obstacles for the US to advance its militarisation in northern Australia.”
The lease of Darwin Port to China’s Landbridge Group has become a contentious issue. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images
Strategic and economic security
“It is well known that Darwin Port only became linked to so-called “national security” and subjected to a wave of political and security scrutiny after so-called “concerns” were voiced from Washington,” the Global Times editorial insists.
All China-based and owned companies must have Communist Party Commissars on their boards. They must also readily hand over any and all information on their customers and deals to any government agency upon demand.
US President Barack Obama broke the news of potential problems directly with then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull during an APEC meeting in November 2015. He asked that Washington be given a “heads-up” over similar deals in future.
Obama’s cause for concern was obvious. Chairman Xi was, at the time, deeply engaged in building illegal island fortresses on sand banks claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan. His government was vocally asserting ownership over Japan and South Korea’s islands in the East China Sea.
Threats of invading Taiwan had already become commonplace.
Darwin was even then a significant stepping stone for rapidly expanding US and allied military activities in northern Australia.
“As the Indo-Pacific becomes increasingly contested, supply chains become more vulnerable and coercive statecraft becomes more common,” argues Australian Strategic Policy Institute national security analyst John Coyne.
“Darwin’s proximity to key maritime routes and regional partners makes it an indispensable asset.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping. Picture: Florence Lo-Pool/Getty Images
Follow the money
The purchase of the Darwin Port was touted as part of Chairman Xi Jinping’s grand “Belt and Road” vision of a Chinese-controlled trade network spanning the Pacific, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
The natural deep-water harbour is strategically positioned as a hub between the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. And about 4.5 million tonnes of cargo and significant quantities of oil and gas pass over its piers each year.
In 2015, the Foreign Investment Review Board headed by then federal treasurer Scott Morrison, decided against examining the proposed deal.
The Defence Department, undergoing one of many ministerial transitions, had no objections. And the then minister for trade and investment, Andrew Robb, was ecstatic.
“(It is) a powerful sign of the enhanced commercial relationship between Australia and China flowing from the China-Australia free trade agreement,” Robb declared in October 2015.
Robb resigned from Parliament four months later and immediately took up a position as “advisor” to the Landbridge Group.
Now, both sides of politics are firmly in agreement: Make Darwin Australian again.
During the 2025 election campaign, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised the port would be sold to an Australian operator.
This is despite reports US equity firm Cerberus Capital, which has close ties to President Donald Trump’s White House administration, is preparing to make a bid.
Former opposition leader Peter Dutton went further, promising his Liberal-National Coalition would nationalise the asset under government ownership.
But Beijing is biting back.
The Global Times warned Tuesday that “should the Australian government take the drastic step of forcibly taking back Darwin Port”, this would “undoubtedly” produce “enduring pitfalls for the country”.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin greets Chinese President Xi Jinping. Picture: Mikhail METZEL / POOL / AFP
Investor returns
“Whether the Port of Darwin becomes a hub of prosperous trade or the eye of a geopolitical storm is not a difficult choice, but it does test Canberra’s strategic wisdom,” the Global Times editorial reads.
The Communist Party editorial says its 2015 purchase had been “timely assistance” to the Northern Territory at a time when Canberra “wasn’t interested”.
“From turning the port’s operations from loss to profit and helping ease the Northern Territory government’s debt crisis, to investing more than $A83 million and upgrading port facilities … and greatly contributing to local economic and social development, Landbridge Group’s involvement has brought systematic and positive changes to Darwin Port,” it states.
But concern over possible financial difficulties contributed to the port’s prominence in the recent Federal Election.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised the port would be sold to an Australian company. Picture: NewsWire / Richard Gosling
Landbridge Australia non-executive director Terry O’Connor said this week that the company had “not yet received any offers or engagement from the (Australian) government at any level.”
But he “welcomed” comments by Beijing’s envoy to Australia, Xiao Qian.
Xiao issued a statement on Sunday after touring the port’s operations. He insisted the lease had been purchased through “an open and transparent bidding process, fully compliant with Australian laws and market principles”.
“It’s very morally inappropriate to rent out the port when it is in the red and take it back once it is profitable,” he argues.
Tuesday’s Global Times editorial went one step further, warning that placing “politics over the rule of law” sent a “dangerous signal to global investors … especially in sectors like infrastructure and energy that require long-term investment”.
NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner speaking with Landbridge Group chairman Ye Cheng. Picture: Lauren Roberts
“The operation of Darwin Port is, at its core, a market-driven economic project and should operate within the framework of the rule of law and market principles,” it adds.
But the world economic and security order has been upended since 2015, with Chairman Xi securing an unconstitutional third term and US President Trump vigorously pursuing an “America First” agenda in the opening months of his second term.
“Darwin’s development has long been framed as a national opportunity. It is now a strategic obligation,” Coyne argues.
“Australia cannot afford to leave its north underdone or underutilised.
“A sovereign, commercially viable, and strategically aligned marine industry in Darwin is no longer aspirational.”
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