TEXAS: An American university has said more than a dozen scholars on a Chinese-funded program that their visas are no longer valid and have to leave the country.
The University of North Texas (UNT) told the researchers that it had cut ties with the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC), a funding program under China’s Ministry of Education.
As a result, their student visas were no longer valid and they had 30 days to leave the country, media reports said.
No reason was given for the decision, but it meant that 15 of the CSC-funded researchers have to leave the United States by the end of September, the South China Morning Post reported.
The decision closes yet another door on academic exchanges between the US and China, with tensions rising between the two countries over US allegations of intellectual property theft and suspicions about Beijing’s influence on American campuses.
UNT’s action comes after US authorities urged universities to be on alert for potential espionage and influence from Chinese government entities, including the CSC.
According to a report released in July by Georgetown University’s Centre for Security and Emerging Technology, the CSC supports between 7 to 18 percent of the 370,000 Chinese students studying in the US.
The US authorities are concerned that Chinese researchers on American universities could steal valuable intellectual property that could find its way into the Chinese military’s hands.
To prevent this, it has barred Chinese researchers with ties to the Chinese military from US universities.
(With inputs from South China Morning Post)
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