photo by: (AP Photo/Andy Wong

FILE - American flags are displayed together with Chinese flags on top of a trishaw on Sept. 16, 2018, in Beijing. )

HONG KONG (AP) — Chinese students studying in the U.S. are scrambling to figure out their futures after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday that some students would have their visas revoked.

The U.S. will begin revoking the visas of some Chinese students, including those studying in “critical fields”, and “those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party,” according to the announcement.

It wasn’t immediately clear what impact the pending visa revocations would have on University of Kansas students. Chinese students represent the second largest contingent of international students on the KU campus, behind only India. KU enrollment figures listed 285 students from China during the Fall 2024 semester.

The Journal-World on Thursday morning sent questions to a spokeswoman in KU Chancellor Douglas Girod’s office seeking comment on the State Department’s pending visa revocations, and also sought information about whether the university is offering any guidance to KU students from China or whether the university is offering them any resources as the student visa questions grow. The Journal-World hasn’t yet received a response from the university.

China is the second-largest country of origin for international students in the United States, behind only India. In the 2023-2024 school year, more than 270,000 international students were from China, making up roughly a quarter of all foreign students in the U.S.

Rubio’s announcement was a “new version of the Chinese Exclusion Act,” said Linqin, a Chinese student at Johns Hopkins University, who asked to be identified only by his first name out of fear of retaliation. He was referring to a 19th-century law that prohibited Chinese from immigrating to the U.S. and banned Chinese people already in the U.S. from getting citizenship. He said Wednesday was the first time he thought about leaving the U.S. after spending a third of his life here.

Chinese international students are point of tension between U.S. and China

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, called the U.S. decision unreasonable.

“Such a politicized and discriminatory action lays bare the U.S. lie that it upholds so-called freedom and openness,” she said Thursday, adding that China has lodged a protest with the U.S.

The issue of Chinese students studying overseas has long been a point of tension in the bilateral relationship. In 2019, during Trump’s first term, China’s Ministry of Education warned students about visa issues in the U.S., with rising rejection rates and shortening of visas.

Last year, the Chinese Foreign Ministry protested that a number of Chinese students were unfairly interrogated and sent home upon arrival at U.S. airports.

Issues have arisen at KU in past years. KU previously was part of a select group of about 90 American universities that operated a Confucius Institute, which provided Chinese language and cultural education while receiving partial financial support from an agency of the Chinese state.

KU closed the center in 2020 after having operated it for about 14 years. The closure came after federal legislation threatened future federal grants to universities that operated Confucius Institutes. Rubio, a U.S. senator at the time, was a leader of the effort to close Confucius Institutes in the U.S.. Rubio and multiple other groups — including the American Association of University Professors — contended the institutes were too closely connected to the Communist Chinese state, functioned in a way that ignored academic freedom, and created national security concerns.

Enrollment of Chinese students at KU has been falling for much of this decade, according to KU enrollment figures. The recent high for Chinese enrollment at KU was the Fall of 2016, when 1,002 student from China were enrolled on the KU campus. The enrollment numbers have fallen every year since, although they largely stabilized this school year. The 285 Chinese students in the fall semester was down just one from the previous year.

In addition to rising geopolitical tensions in the U.S., the Chinese government also has done less to promote Chinese students studying in America.

Chinese state media has long hyped gun violence in the U.S. and violent protests during the pandemic, and portrayed the U.S. as a dangerous place that wasn’t safe for its citizens. The tense bilateral relationship has also meant that some Chinese students are opting to study in the U.K. or other countries over the U.S. after the pandemic.

Zou Renge, a 27-year-old public policy master’s student at the University of Chicago, said she had planned to take some time off and work in humanitarian aid programs abroad after graduating at the end of this year.

But now, she will refrain from leaving the U.S. and will look for jobs in the meantime. “In a very uncertain environment, I’ll try my best to find myself a solution,” she said.

Hong Kong seeks to draw in talent amid uncertainty

Some were eager to capitalize on the uncertainty facing international students in the U.S. Hong Kong’s leader John Lee told lawmakers on Thursday that the city would welcome any students who have been discriminated against by American policies to study in the city.

“The students who face unfair treatment can come from different countries beyond the U.S. I think this is an opportunity for Hong Kong,” he said. “We will work with our universities to provide the best support and assistance.”

That followed a widely shared post by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) inviting Harvard students to “continue their academic pursuits” there after Trump said he would revoke the university’s ability to accept international students.

Other Hong Kong universities including the Chinese University of Hong Kong and City University of Hong Kong also said they would streamline or facilitate applications from international students coming from top universities in the U.S.

Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to China in 1997, is a popular destination for mainland Chinese students to pursue their university degrees because of its international image and relative freedoms.

The city launched a new visa scheme in 2022 to counter the exodus of expatriates and local professionals that occurred after Beijing imposed a national security law to quell dissent and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Will Kwong, managing director at Hong Kong’s AAS Education Consultancy, said his company was helping students with offers from American universities to apply to other institutions, predominantly in Britain and Australia, so that they had alternative choices.

U.S. was known for diversity and this will hurt it, students say

“Having fewer international exchanges is definitely not good for America’s development,” said Zhang Qi, a postdoctoral fellow in Beijing. “This could be a positive change for China’s development. More talented individuals may choose to stay at Tsinghua or Peking University, or with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other top institutions in China, which would benefit the development of domestic science and technology.”

For many, there is little they can do as they now wait for the fallout from the move.

Chen, an incoming Chinese student at Purdue University who only gave his last name out of concern for retaliation by the Trump administration, has been waiting anxiously in China for his visa approval. But he was also angry, and said this was the exact opposite of what he thought the U.S. stood for.

“I was expecting freedom and tolerance. The U.S. was known for its diversity which allows international students to fit in, but it is a pity to see such change,” he said.

Any new policy that aggressively begins to revoke Chinese student visas is likely to add to the struggles of KU and other universities to grow international enrollment totals, which once were a significant driver of enrollment growth but has faltered every since the first Trump administration and the pandemic. Overall international student enrollment at KU stood at 1,976 students in the fall. That’s down from a recent high of 2,538 international students in the fall of 2015. International enrollment levels fell for the next five years, but began to grow again in the fall of 2021 and have posted increases for four consecutive years, including this school year.

• Journal-World Editor Chad Lawhorn and Associated Press reporters contributed to this report.