Europe seeks to welcome more Chinese students amid US crackdown despite its own visa restrictions

LONDON – Universities across Europe are planning to attract more Chinese students after President Donald Trump’s administration announced its latest crackdown

on visas for Chinese nationals studying in the US

.

Hope for a boost in Chinese enrolment numbers is particularly strong in British universities, where Chinese students registered at higher educational establishments generate an estimated £5.5 billion (S$9.6 billion) in yearly revenues. This accounts for about half of the income British universities receive from international students who pay full, rather than heavily subsidised, tuition fees.

Even before the latest US immigration restrictions were introduced, an uptick in Chinese applications to British universities was under way.

A study by Knight Frank, a consultancy, noted that in January 2025, just as Mr Trump was about to be sworn into office on Jan 20, applications from China to study in British universities surged by 8.9 per cent.

“We remain dedicated to welcome the brightest and the best to study with us,” said Dr Michael Spence, president of University College London, where tuition fees from Chinese students are reputed to account for around 10 per cent of revenues.

Comparable top educational establishments throughout Europe are making similar statements.

While European officials claim to be shocked by the recently imposed US immigration restrictions on the admission of Chinese students, the reality is that European governments have imposed similar curbs for many years.

Such European restrictions, however, very rarely affect undergraduates from China. Still, they are increasingly restrictive on Chinese nationals wishing to register for postgraduate degrees in leading scientific disciplines.

Britain introduced its Academic Technology Approval Scheme (Atas) in 2007. This requires citizens of countries who need visas to come to Britain – such as China – to get special clearance if they wish to engage in postgraduate studies in dual-use disciplines that could be useful in manufacturing weapons or the handling of substances essential in producing weapons of mass destruction.

Atas was expanded in 2020 to apply not only to weapons of mass destruction technologies but also to all advanced conventional military technologies, thereby encompassing a broad range of physics, engineering and computer science disciplines.

The scheme was further expanded in 2021 to encompass both foreign researchers and postgraduate students.

The British government is reluctant to discuss this scheme extensively or the nationality of the researchers and postgraduate students whose visa applications were rejected under Atas. But inquiries conducted by The Guardian, a British broadsheet newspaper, reveal that around 1,100 scientists and aspiring postgraduate students were refused entry in 2022 – the last period for which consolidated statistics are available – on national security grounds.

This represented a small share of the total 50,000 applications submitted under Atas that year.

Chinese nationals under the spotlight

Still, total British visa refusals to researchers and students under this scheme have jumped almost tenfold from figures recorded in 2020, when the Atas provisions were first tightened. A majority of those denied entry are Chinese nationals.

Similar measures are now being discussed elsewhere in Europe.

The Council of the European Union, representing the heads of state and governments of the EU’s 27 member states, has issued guidance documents urging European nations to consider the security implications of their international academic research cooperation.

Most of these documents date back to 2022 and were clearly prompted by the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, as well as growing disquiet about China’s response to the conflict and intensified technology competition. China has

abstained from voting on a United Nations resolution

that condemned Russia’s invasion.

Denying visas to researchers and postgraduate students remains the responsibility of individual EU nations.

Still, EU institutions have continued to sound alarm bells at what they term “tech leakage” to foreign researchers registered at the continent’s top academic institutions.

This is an “emerging risk”, said Ms Iliana Ivanova, who until recently served as the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth. Europe “cannot afford any longer to be naive”, she added.

In January 2024, Ms Ivanova suggested that European universities engaged in sensitive technological research on microchips, quantum, biotech and artificial intelligence should accept the appointment of “liaison officers” from their respective nations’ intelligence agencies to advise academics on how to deal with foreign researchers who may be engaged in spying.

The Netherlands, home to Europe’s most advanced research into semiconductors, has already set up a single office dealing with the security implications of applications from foreign researchers at its national universities.

Much of the attention is on Chinese nationals connected to seven universities affiliated with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, popularly referred to as the “Seven Sons of National Defence”. These include Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Beihang University) and Harbin Engineering University.

Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands – one of the world’s leading technical universities – no longer accepts researchers from these seven Chinese establishments. But other European universities are barring Chinese scholars not so much due to their affiliations but more because of who funds their research in Europe.

For instance, the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in southern Germany, ranked among the top in the country’s engineering and computer sciences, decided in 2023 to deny admission to doctoral students from China if the China Scholarship Council funded them. This was due to fears that information from any joint research could end up in the hands of the Chinese government.

Even educational establishments in historically neutral Switzerland are restricting access to some Chinese researchers.

ETH Zurich, renowned for its pioneering engineering and scientific research, issued a detailed outline in October 2024 of its new rules for foreign students applying for master’s and doctoral degrees.

The Swiss guidelines are stricter than those of other European universities in mandating the prior vetting of research students from China, particularly those with ties to military-linked universities.

All university administrators in Europe continue to claim that they see no reason why such measures should restrict the majority of academic exchanges.

Still, the reality remains that Europe’s criticism of recent US measures restricting visas to Chinese students deserves to be taken with a large pinch of salt.