U.S. schools—and one prestigious institution in particular—have long offered up-and-coming Chinese officials a place to study governance, a practice that the Trump administration could end with a new effort to keep out what it says are Chinese students with Communist Party ties.
For decades, the party has sent thousands of mid-career and senior bureaucrats to pursue executive training and postgraduate studies on U.S. campuses, with Harvard University a coveted destination described by some in China as the top “party school” outside the country.
Alumni of such programs include a former vice president and Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s top negotiator in trade talks with the first Trump administration.
In an effort announced Wednesday by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. authorities will tighten criteria for visa applications from China and “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”
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Alleged ties with the Communist Party have emerged as a leading line of attack in President Trump’s pressure campaign against Harvard. {snip}
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Some U.S. politicians have said that China’s Communist Party is harvesting expertise in American academia to ultimately harm U.S. interests. The Trump administration has cited these criticisms among others to back its efforts to force a major cultural shift in U.S. colleges, which many conservatives regard as bastions of liberal and left-wing ideology.
American universities have played leading roles in shaping China’s overseas training programs for mid-career officials, which Beijing started arranging at scale in the 1990s as a way to improve governance by exposing its bureaucrats to Western public-policy ideas and practices.
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Harvard enjoys a sterling reputation among Chinese officials thanks to its record in training highflying bureaucrats who went on to take senior government roles and, in some cases, join the party’s elite Politburo. Some observers dubbed Harvard a de facto “party school,” as the party’s own training academies for promising bureaucrats are known.
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While Harvard Kennedy School hosted Chinese students as early as the 1980s, Beijing started sending officials for mid-career training there in a more organized manner in the following decade, according to Chinese media reports. One program, launched in 1998, offered fellowships and executive training courses to around 20 senior officials each year.
In the early 2000s, Harvard launched another program, “China’s Leaders in Development,” through which Chinese officials would undergo a weekslong training course split between Harvard and Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University.
The program was designed to “help prepare senior local and central Chinese government officials to more effectively address the ongoing challenges of China’s national reforms,” according to Harvard.
According to newsletters published by the Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, the Harvard segment of the program has featured classes on subjects including public management, economic development and social policy, as well as visits to U.S. government organizations.
Some children of top Communist Party officials have also attended Harvard for undergraduate and postgraduate studies.
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