The educational irony of US-China trade war
International students contribute about $39 billion to the U.S. economy and make up about 5.5% of enrollment nationally.
Amid the China-US trade war, Huawei, a Chinese technological company — founded by Ren Zhengfei, a former communist engineer in the People’s Liberation Army — relates to the story of how China comes ahead of the U.S. in the educational battle.
As a Chinese technological company, Huawei, at the moment, is excelling in the smartphone market; ranking second, only behind Samsung in the third quarter of 2018, according to International Data Corporation (IDC). The Chinese company shipped 52.0 million smartphones, with 14.6% market penetration.
On 13 August 2018, Huawei and one other Chinese Telecommunication equipment company, ZTE technology, were banned from use by the US government and government contractors. The ban was signed into place by President Donald Trump under the Defense Authorization Act.
Prior to the ban, both the companies had also been declared a national security threat by a 2012 US House Intelligence Committee report.
The ban is analogous with the tariff that initiated the China-US trade war.
On 6 July 2018, America imposed 25% duties on Chinese imports worth about $34 billion.
China, in response, imposed a 25% tariff on 545 goods exported by the US, including agricultural products, automobiles and aquatic products.
The trade war has continued ever since, affecting not only China and the US, but the global economy.
For instance, Europe’s largest economy, Germany, barely avoided slipping into recession, whereas UK industrial production also shrunk.
Yet, the global economy is not the only aspect that the China-US trade war has influenced.
China has the largest college student population of 37 million (the growth was projected to hit 50% in 2019), as per a 2015 report by China’s Ministry of Education. One fifth of the world’s college student population lived in China.
China, the largest source of international students, continues to send more students abroad than any other nation.
In 2017, 608,400 Chinese students pursued advanced studies abroad, an increase of 11.74% over 2016.
According to UNESCO, there are currently more than 860,000 Chinese students abroad.
Chinese students also make up the largest group of international students in the US. They account for nearly 40% of all foreign students. As of August 2018, there were 378,003 active Chinese students in the US.
In times of the ongoing tit for tat between China and the US, such substantial numbers could be very problematic.
Ultimately, trade tensions and political mistrust might lead to concerns about possible spying operations in American universities; alleging students as agents or spies of the Chinese government.
For instance, in 2018, the Wilson Centre in Washington — a United States Presidential Memorial — published a report on how the Chinese political influence and interference affects the US higher education.
The same year, the U.S. State Department shortened the length of visas for Chinese graduate students studying engineering (specifically, aviation, robotics and advanced manufacturing) from five years to one. The goal, as the U.S. officials stated, was to restrain the risk of spying and theft of intellectual property in areas vital to national security.
Although China is a global powerhouse, it still falls behind in the field of educational sectors. Thus, the majority of Chinese students in the U.S. are, more often than not, perceived as ‘spies’ trying to ‘steal intellectual property’.
And, while the U.S. government tries to confine the quantity of Chinese students coming to the country, the U.S. economy suffers.
International students contribute about $39 billion (in 2018) to the U.S. economy and make up about 5.5% of enrollment nationally, said Rachel Banks, director for public policy of NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
In 2017, the figure amounted to $42 billion.
The Institute of International Education (IIE) also stated that new foreign students enrollment in the US dropped by 6.6% (double the previous year’s rate of decline) in the 2017–18 academic year. This, perhaps, was one of the heaviest blows that the U.S. economy took due to the China-US trade war.
The U.S. government, in its accusations — whether rightly or wrongly so — seems somewhat fearful of China’s massive leap forward in the educational sector. But they seem to have miscalculated one move of their own — that, by depriving Chinese students access to education in the U.S., China’s race to the top will falter.
However, that is far from being true.
In 2018, two universities (Peking university and Tsinghua university) from China ranked inside the World University Rankings (Times Highers, 2018) top 30; outranking several prestigious institutions in Europe and the US.
Almost all Chinese universities improved, signalling that the country’s commitments to investment in education has bolstered results year-on-year. In contrast, 29 out of 62 US institutions in the top 200 dropped places.
The government of China — embodied by president and general secretary of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping — is furthermore taking measures to improve education at all levels, and envisions producing at least 40 world-class universities by mid-century (the figure will rise to 16 by 2030).
Huawei’s current standing against the U.S. government, echoes that of the Chinese government and the officials involved in negotiating the China-US trade deal.
For example, Huawei’s initiation towards becoming the first company to deploy 5G networks at scale was, again, met with accusations from the U.S. government. But Trump has since stated (on his twitter account) how America is lagging behind in regards to 5G networks. To that, Guo Ping, Huawei’s chairman, sided with Trump’s statement.
Similarly, circumventing the first tariff of China-US trade war, China, the world’s largest buyer of soybeans, has looked towards America’s neighbour, Canada, for soybeans.
As of January 2019, Canada’s shipments of soybeans to China surged to a record 1.23 million metric tons, according to Bloomberg, a privately held financial, software, data and media company based in the U.S..
Meanwhile, imports from the U.S. has fallen from 5.8 million (from January 2018) to 136,000 tons.
Huawei — despite the U.S. government’s multiple attempts to block initiations, namely its 5G network deployment — have more to offer than to receive from the U.S.
Likewise, China — whether that be their students, their technology or even their importing of soybeans — do not rely on America as much as America relies on China.
