Students from China Are Essential for America

A recent poll showed that 88 percent of American voters worry that the rapid pace of Beijing’s technological advancements will give China military superiority over the U.S. One way to make sure that this dire prediction comes true is to ban Chinese and other foreign students and researchers from studying here.

Try to imagine the Manhattan Project without German refugee scientists like Hans Bethe, or another refugee from an Axis power, Enrico Fermi. Or try to imagine America’s ballistic missile program, including the moonshot, without German scientists like Wernher von Braun. There are times when scientists and researchers from other countries, even nominally hostile ones, can be crucial to the development and maintenance of America’s technological edge.

There are plenty of reasons for America to be concerned about China, including its command-and-control government, its technology theft and its inequitable trading practices. The arrest in June of two Chinese student researchers from the University of Michigan, for allegedly smuggling biological pathogens into the U.S., underlines the importance of making sure that Chinese students and scientists aren’t getting into our country in order to do us harm.

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