When China and the US wage a visa war against each other’s scholars, nobody wins

The US and China are escalating their restrictions on access by academics from the other side, which poses serious problems for scholarship and bilateral relations, at a time when mutual understanding is much needed

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Published: 2:00am, 23 Apr 2019Updated: 2:27am, 23 Apr 2019

The news in The New York Times last week about the US government revoking multi-year and multiple-entry visas for well-known Chinese scholars Zhu Feng of Nanjing University and Wu Baiyi of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of American Studies has now been matched by recent reports that the Chinese embassy in Washington did not issue visas to Donald Trump’s China adviser Michael Pillsbury and former deputy special trade representative Wendy Cutler to attend a conference in Beijing.

The “visa war” between the US and China is not at all helpful. At this time of significant stress in US-China relations, it is precisely the time when we need to have as much dialogue among academic experts as possible.

Yet many of the institutional channels for such “Track II” dialogues have broken down in recent years, and now there is the additional problem of visa bans and other blocks to research and communication.

It is important to note that this issue is not new, and this phase is only the latest skirmish in a long-brewing problem. China definitely started this dilemma by banning and not issuing visas for a number of American scholars over recent decades.

The “Xinjiang Thirteen” (US scholars who contributed to a 2004 book about Xinjiang) have long been banned (although a few were offered single-entry visas after the Obama administration pressured the Hu Jintao government).

A few American scholars – including several leading Sinologists – have been banned from visiting China for decades, while others are more recent casualties.