Graduate Students and the U.S. China Initiative

The 2018 China Initiative systematically targeted international Chinese scholars as possible spies for China. Previous research has demonstrated ways that the China Initiative engaged in racial profiling, resulting in scholars of Chinese descent feeling unwelcomed in U.S. higher education institutions and insecure in their engagement as researchers. Graduate students were not exempt. Using descriptive analyses and proportion tests, this study explores the nuanced ways that Chinese graduate students felt discriminated against and racially profiled in comparison to their non-Chinese peers during the height of the U.S. China Initiative. Framed by neo-racism, this research also assesses how those experiences impacted students’ future educational mobility plans. Chinese graduate students feel more targeted than their non-Chinese peers and they expressed an interest in leaving the United States due to these negative perceptions. As international Chinese enrollments in the United States are declining, our study seeks to identify the factors that may contribute to this trend.