Between soft power and suspicion: Chinese international students as diasporic actors in U.S.‐China geopolitical tensions

Abstract This study examines the under‐theorized political role and identity of Chinese international students, who emerge as significant actors caught between U.S. soft power ambitions and rising geopolitical suspicion. Amid escalating U.S.‐China tensions, these students are forced to confront environments shaped by competing geopolitical discourses, where they are discursively positioned as insufficiently loyal or even anti‐China in some home‐country narratives, while simultaneously being constructed as national security threats in the host country. By reimagining them as “diaspora in the making,” this research investigates how macro‐level geopolitical dynamics are experienced and negotiated through the micro‐level interactions of everyday academic life. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with 38 Chinese international students at a large, predominantly white Midwestern university, the analysis identifies three key manifestations: political labelling, racialized border surveillance and everyday social tensions. Findings further reveal that students develop critical awareness of competing U.S. and Chinese media discourses and become aware of their racialization as “Asian” within American contexts. Importantly, the study demonstrates that these students are not passive subjects; they exercise strategic agency by navigating structural constraints, engaging in digital activism and forging solidarity across transnational spaces. This research advances diaspora studies by expanding the concept of Chinese diaspora to include international students as strategic actors who actively shape their political identities and communities within global power structures.