600,000 Chinese university students confessed to the United States? Do not rely on it.

President Trump’s recent statements in the United States of China’s commercial talks caused 600,000 Chinese students in a stir between his bound base. But there are reasons for treating this claim with doubt.

First, there are currently only about 277,000 Chinese students in the United States who admit that 600,000 will represent a double increase at a time when Chinese registration is heading down.

Second, although it is clear that China does not want to completely separate from American higher education, it has also started implementing policies that motivate its citizens to follow the grades at home. Some provinces in China began excluding foreign certificates of government jobs completely. China’s demographic problems will accelerate the government’s need for Chinese youth to stay at home, fearing that they will put their roots elsewhere.

Many objections to accepting large numbers of Chinese students related to the potential national security risks represented in the presence of large numbers of students from a foreign opponent within the United States, where they may be able to commit spy or even sabotage.

It is true that Chinese students have potential risks, and the United States should not turn a blind eye to good -intentioned but misleading attempts to avoid appearing. Chinese students in the United States have been charged with espionage. Others intimidated their peers here and reported their activities to the Communist Party of China.

There is likely to have a greater but unknown number of abuse of a student visa system in the United States by cheating on English literacy tests. Reports on betrayal of the academic secretariat committed by Chinese citizens in American colleges and universities on a large scale.

These negative aspects should not be rejected or ignored, but they can be diluted with strict monitoring and accountability measures. Responsible policy makers must also weigh these risks against how to provide US national security by having large numbers of Chinese students at our universities. These benefits often cannot be discriminatory because pro -immigration defenders tend to focus on human and moral arguments to join international students, but the issue of national security is a clearer advantages of the national interest.

The most urgent feature of studying Chinese students in the United States is that it keeps them outside China for at least four years. This helps us to expand our demographic advantages on China, where some of its youth will choose to settle in the United States, which contributes to the rapid birth rate in China. Chinese students also come in an impartial manner from wealthy families, which means that they will spend money in local American economies rather than help maintain the Chinese economy standing on its feet.

In recent years, the United States has also struggled to infiltrate China. The risk of spying for Chinese students in both directions – while it allows the Chinese Communist Party to grow potential intelligence assets in the United States, gives our intelligence agencies a large group of potential recruits to benefit from home soil as the risk of objection is reduced.

The idea that Chinese students enjoy the final and unimportant loyalty to the Communist Party of China is the same propaganda by the party to bend the attempts to recruit students who study abroad. But separately, they are more explicit about their concerns about the recruitment of educated students in the United States.

At a broader level, large numbers of Chinese students in the United States allow us to directly influence a section of Chinese society that is preparing for future leadership with the American higher and cultural customs. We can do a much better job by dismantling the effect of Confucius institutes and creating our own targeted programs, but the way to increase this opportunity is through greater integration and assimilation of Chinese students instead of following comprehensive exceptions.

President Trump’s comment about 600,000 unrealistic Chinese students for several reasons, and levels of enrollment in historical levels should not rise. But policy makers will be wise to weigh all the risks and benefits that Chinese students enjoy for American national security during the upcoming negotiations.

A generation that is not He is an analyst of immigration policies at the NISKANEN Center, and he was appointed as an expert in 2024 in Latin America by young professionals in foreign policy.