REBECCAH HEINRICHS: If China targeted our elections, America must slash student visas now
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Appearing visibly angry in his first address to the nation on Thursday night, the US president told the American people that China was aggressively interfering in our elections.
The allegations were eye-popping, and debates over how to better secure voting procedures and maintain a free and fair press in America will continue. But there’s another question Americans should ask: What will the United States do about China now?
One of the most obvious and immediate actions would be to rescind the president’s decision to admit large numbers of Chinese students to American universities. Universities are fertile ground for groundbreaking research and technology and offer tremendous espionage opportunities. On Thursday, the day of the president’s speech, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would tighten restrictions on foreign student visas. But there is no doubt that major reductions in Chinese student visas must be made quickly following the president’s speech.
CHINA REJECTS TRUMP’S CLAIMS OF ELECTION INTERFERENCE AS ‘PURE PRACTICE’, THREATENS COUNTERMEASURES
Trump said China stole millions of files belonging to American voters in order to influence the 2020 presidential elections. Stolen election data included names, addresses, phone numbers, political affiliations and other voter registration information.
Universities are fertile ground for groundbreaking research and technology and offer tremendous espionage opportunities.
Trump also claimed that China was trying to influence business leaders to drop their support for Trump’s presidential candidacy and to identify American journalists who reported negatively on his presidency. It was later alleged that China offered large sums of money to journalists to amplify their negative coverage in the hope of undermining Trump’s re-election campaign.
It will take weeks and months to detail the president’s claims and independently verify them, but the White House has made public heavily redacted intelligence documents that purportedly support them. It is imperative that our election system, as well as the private information of American citizens, is safe and secure.
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Voters must also be confident that they can vote safely, that every vote will be counted fairly, and that the outcome of the election accurately reflects the views of American citizens. If this claim is borne out, no business leader or journalist should be bribed to support or work against any American candidate in the service of America’s enemies.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Thursday, May 14, 2026. (Pool Photo via Kenny Holston/AP)
At the same time, the United States should take all reasonable measures to thwart China’s blatant intelligence-gathering operations and explain that these measures are a direct response to China’s exploitation and abuse of America’s open society.
In August 2025, President Trump announced that the United States would accept up to 600,000 Chinese students. In response to opposition from many of the president’s supporters, the White House declared that this was a continuation of US policy.
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Trump defended his position and said denying Beijing access to these visas would be an “insult” to China and would damage relations between the two countries amid important talks on trade.
Trump’s defense of Chinese visas was a reversal of a position expressed several months earlier by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio said in May 2025 that he would revoke Chinese visas for people with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), especially those “studying in critical fields.” At his confirmation hearing before the Senate, Rubio said China was the country’s greatest geopolitical enemy. He also added, “Most of what we need to do to combat China is right here at home.” he said.
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In fact, China attaches great importance to US student visas. Xi Jinping is the only CCP leader since Mao Zedong to remain in power after two five-year terms. He is now in his third five-year term with no end in sight and appears to be carrying out his plan to replace the United States as the most powerful and influential country in the world.
Xi’s goals will not preserve anything resembling the status quo for Americans. China expert Matt Pottinger, a former senior official in the first Trump administration, wrote that Xi’s goal is to “shatter the West and usher in an anti-democratic order.”
The basis of China’s effort to outpace America is to collect vast amounts of data to manipulate Americans’ thoughts and ideas, divide and confuse them, and advance China’s technology in space, advanced artificial intelligence, aviation, and quantum computing.
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It’s a simple and deadly formula: to divide Americans and deprive them of sensitive national security research and technologies, while maintaining control and unity among the Chinese population and advancing China’s key industries to outpace the United States.
Department of Homeland Security Thursday press release “Since 1978, foreign students have been admitted to the United States for an indefinite period of time, allowing thousands to become ‘forever students’ by continuously enrolling in courses to avoid leaving.”
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This is an obvious problem, but it’s only one side of the issue. There are hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens enrolled in American universities, and many focus their efforts on STEM-related research. And while Americans may want to generously invite foreign nationals to study at U.S. universities, especially in the hopes of encouraging students to become more pro-American, applicants who receive American visas from China must go through a government and CCP review process, and every candidate must go through that process. Even if a Chinese student has no desire to harm the United States, he is necessarily loyal to and sensitive to China and the CCP.
Trump’s Thursday speech should be a turning point not only to mobilize bipartisan American support to ensure fair elections, but also to protect our nation from Chinese espionage and impose a high cost on China for its exploitation of our open society.
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