As tensions with China rise, scientists at America’s leading universities complain of stalled research after crackdown at airports

Stopped at the border, interrogated on national security grounds, laptops and mobile phones checked, held for several hours, plans for future research shattered. ⠀

Earlier this month the Chinese embassy in Washington said more than 70 students “with legal and valid materials” had been deported from the US since July 2021, with more than 10 cases since November 2023. The embassy said it had complained to the US authorities about each case. ⠀

“The impact is huge,” says Qin Yan, a professor of pathology at Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut, who says that he is aware of more than a dozen Chinese students from Yale and other universities who have been rejected by the US in recent months, despite holding valid visas. Experiments have stalled, and there is a “chilling effect” for the next generation of Chinese scientists. ⠀

The refusals appear to be linked to a 2020 US rule that barred Chinese postgraduate students with links to China’s “military-civil fusion strategy”, which aims to leverage civilian infrastructure to support military development. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute thinktank estimates that 95 civilian universities in China have links to the defence sector.

Nearly 2,000 visas applications were rejected on that basis in 2021. But now people who pass the security checks necessary to be granted a visa by the State Department are being turned away at the border by CBP, a different branch of government.

“It is very hard for a CBP officer to really evaluate the risk of espionage,” said Dan Berger, an immigration lawyer in Massachusetts, who represents a graduate student at Yale who, midway through her PhD, was sent back from Washington’s Dulles airport in December, and banned from re-entering the US for five years. ⠀

Academics say that scrutiny has widened to different fields – particularly medical sciences – with the reasons for the refusals not made clear.

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      • @Arelin@lemmy.zip
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        7 months ago

        Lmao liberals getting mad at (in this case non-existent) “violations” of laws that only exist to protect the capitalist class is always funny

        Intellectual property shouldn’t exist in the first place; it kills millions of people every year from patented drugs, etc. and it did so in Africa during covid.

        • @Rinox@feddit.it
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          47 months ago

          While I agree that intellectual property has been abused over and over, especially in the last two decades, we need to remember the reason why patents became a thing, and that reason was to promote open research and cooperation.

          Without patents the only tool businesses had to protect and exploit their inventions and discoveries was secrecy, which creates a terrible environment for research, full of espionage and subterfuge and without a library of human inventions and research ready for anyone to take and build upon.

          It’s somewhat of a necessary evil, a carrot in order to incentivize businesses and individuals to share their research and their inventions, instead of keeping them to themselves in fear of someone else stealing them. It does have issues though, especially regarding the lack of a “fair” use of the monopoly the patent grants for it’s duration.

          And, again, I’m talking about patents. Copyright is a whole other can of worms, way worse in some ways.

        • @UsernameHere
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          37 months ago

          Then you spend the money on research and development with no reward. Let’s see how much new technology gets invented without IP laws.

          • @Arelin@lemmy.zip
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            07 months ago

            Capitalist apologia; IP laws only hinder innovation by protecting megacorporations and their monopolies. Most real innovations even in capitalist countries happen from state investment anyway.

            how new technology gets invented without IP laws

            The video linked in the previous comment outlines some methods by which workers are compensated for their work instead of capitalists, some of which have been successfully utilized by socialist states like the USSR, and even in capitalist countries in the form of grants, etc.

            • Grants as mentioned before, the resulting creations entering the public domain to prevent monopoly over it
            • Decentralized platform for crowdfunding useful projects
            • “Patents” that only exist to make sure the correct people are credited for a work while keeping it public domain

            Proffessor Richard Wolff also has a video on socialist approaches to development.

            • BaldProphet
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              27 months ago

              Except while the USSR was crumbling, the capitalistic United States wasn’t. Not really a convincing example of a “successful” system.

              • @UsernameHere
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                27 months ago

                Not to mention his “state sponsored research and development” isn’t publically available. Countries aren’t going to spend money on R&D just to give it to other countries. They keep their research private because it’s a matter of national security.

        • MxM111
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          -187 months ago

          Those drugs wouldn’t be developed in the first place, if there were no IP. The system is not ideal, but I would rather address its issues than destroy everything completely. When hous is on fire, the right thing is put out the fire, not to destroy the town.

          • The Uncanny Observer
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            227 months ago

            Your comment is pretty ridiculous when you consider that multiple times in history, the scientists who invented vaccines or treatments that saved millions of people put those inventions into the public domain.

            The idea that without capitalism, there is no innovation, is ridiculous. Capitalism is a fairly new idea in history, you’ve just fallen for the propaganda.

            • MxM111
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              -87 months ago

              Sure, some medicine would be developed, not claiming that there would be none. But there would be less. Profit motivation is one hell of a drug (pun not intended). Compare USSR and USA at the time. It is actually incomparable in terms of advancement of drugs and medical devices and even dentistry. What kills is absence of universal insurance, not presence of IP.

          • @Arelin@lemmy.zip
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            127 months ago

            When hous is on fire, the right thing is put out the fire

            The fire is the capitalist laws like IP; the “hous” is a country’s development. So yes, the fire should be put out.

          • @Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            and because they’re on an instance without downvotes they’re only going to see the 7 upvotes they did get. It’s 2024 why are people still buying into capitalist realism?? All the guys pushing for it have all moved on to pushing pedo-nazi shit you should be better than this.

            • wildncrazyguy
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              -27 months ago

              If you think all capitalists are nazis then your ideology has blinded you.

              • @Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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                7 months ago

                People pushing for capitalist realism absolutely are, and usually the nazism comes secondary to the pedophilia with those types.

                Also, relevant meme:

                • wildncrazyguy
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                  07 months ago

                  Never said communism is bad, friend, just that it’s not a good idea to be consumed by any ideological framework - that’s how you become a zealot or worse, an enabler to someone who corrupts the cause.

          • @hglman@lemmy.ml
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            57 months ago

            People hate saving others, you really have to give them so many incentives to care. /S

      • @Arcturus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        127 months ago

        Yeah, it’s terrible how capitalists and their megacorps might not profit as much if that’s happening…

        (which it isn’t these days btw; countries like the US and China violated bullshit british IP laws when industrializing, and they don’t really need to do that once they are industrialized)

        • @ed_cock@feddit.de
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          7 months ago

          You are making it sound like China and its large corporations weren’t also very interested in profits and market domination.

          • @Arcturus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 months ago

            That’s included in the “industrializing” part, no?

            Under capitalism, industrialization and therefore “market domination” realistically means ignoring the laws meant to keep competition down.

    • @nekandro@lemmy.ml
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      137 months ago

      Stealing IP by… Publishing their own work on publicly accessible journals and conferences? The absolute horror. You don’t steal public IP, you gain (or lose) the rights to use it.

      • @UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee
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        -37 months ago

        I would have no problem if everything was open sourced. However, Chinese capitalists steal this data, make it proprietary and profit off of it themselves. This is the “horror”.

        • @nekandro@lemmy.ml
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          127 months ago

          It’s public research. How exactly do you propose to make public research proprietary? The university holds the rights.