UC Irvine, Dartmouth, and 7 Other Universities Collaborate
Providing Tuition and Scholarship Support for Master's and Doctoral Degrees
Despite geopolitical tensions with the United States, China is encouraging young talents to study in the U.S.
According to the Hong Kong South China Morning Post (SCMP) on the 2nd (local time), the China Scholarship Council (CSC), under the Ministry of Education, plans to select 240 talents to support their studies in the U.S. next year.
The selected individuals will enroll in seven U.S. universities affiliated with the CSC, including the University of California (UC) Irvine campus, UC Davis campus, UC Riverside campus, Dartmouth College, University of Notre Dame, Temple University, and University of Tennessee, to obtain master's and doctoral degrees.
The tuition fees for the first two years will be covered by the CSC, and a monthly scholarship will also be provided. In the case of UC Irvine, if students maintain a certain level of academic performance, they will receive a full scholarship and health insurance starting from the third year of their doctoral program. However, all recipients of the government-funded scholarships are required to return to China after graduation and work there for at least two years.
SCMP noted that this encouragement by Chinese education authorities to study in the U.S. comes amid a prevailing atmosphere in the U.S. of rooting out spies among Chinese researchers and students, making it particularly noteworthy. According to a recent report published by the Institute of International Education (IIE) New York branch, the number of Chinese students in the U.S. for the 2022-23 academic year was about 290,000, down from the record high of 372,000 in the 2019-20 academic year. While the pandemic had an impact, it is widely assessed that U.S. government visa refusals and strict surveillance of Chinese students played a significant role.
Earlier this year, reports emerged that about ten Chinese students pursuing doctoral programs at prestigious private U.S. universities such as Yale University and Johns Hopkins University were denied entry into the U.S. after returning to China to visit their families. Despite holding valid visas, they were forcibly deported to China and banned from entering the U.S. for five years.
Some point out that the decades-long competition between the U.S. and China to secure scientific talent has escalated into a "spy war," resulting in mutual avoidance of each other's students. Previously, China launched the "Thousand Talents Plan" (千人計劃) in 2008 to cultivate overseas talent for advanced science and technology development. The U.S., viewing this as an attempt at industrial espionage, introduced the "China Initiative" in November 2018 under the Trump administration to protect technology and intellectual property. Although the Biden administration officially ended the China Initiative in 2022, investigations targeting Chinese scholars and discriminatory attitudes reportedly persist.
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