During a state visit to China, Trump doubled down on the importance of international students propping up the US college system, praising the “good students” from China and appearing to criticise the fact they struggle to get green cards in the US.
Asked about the “issue” of Chinese students at US universities by Fox News presenter Sean Hannity, Trump said: “I frankly think that it’s good that people come from other countries, and they learn our culture and many of them want to stay here.”
“If they’re good and they want to stay in America… we won’t give them a green card. Not only them, but [students from] other countries.”
He said it was “a very insulting thing to tell a country, ‘We don’t want your students’”, acknowledging: “They would then immediately go out and start building universities all over China”.
Trump repeatedly referred to the “500,000 [Chinese] students that come” to the US, though the latest Open Doors figures show approximately 265,000 Chinese students studied in the US last year, including those on Optional Practical Training (OPT).
It is unclear whether the President was mistaken, or whether the 500,000 figure speaks to his intentions of roughly doubling current enrolment levels from China, harking back to remarks he made in August 2025 about welcoming 600,000 Chinese students to the US.
While the comments are a positive signal for Chinese parents and students, experts say the interview hasn’t been as widely covered in China as Trump’s previous comments, and that it is unlikely to shift public perceptions in the country.
“Given the conflicting signals from DHS, State, and the White House, most Chinese families are waiting to see whether these statements translate into policy action or a meaningful improvement in how Chinese students are treated on the ground,” David Weeks, CEO of Sunrise International, told The PIE News.
Rather than Chinese audiences, Weeks suggested the interview was “primarily for domestic US consumption: a message to Congressional Republicans and administration officials to ease off restrictions targeting Chinese students”.
Executive director of the US-China Education Trust (USCET) Rosie Levine agreed that Trump’s comments might be welcomed in China but would not be enough to change study decisions following the administration’s openly hostile policies and rhetoric targeting Chinese students last year.
“Enrolling in a US institution is a high-cost option for families… If international student visa policies or a school’s SEVIS certification can change arbitrarily, parents don’t want to take on that risk,” Levine told The PIE News.
Rhetoric and policy have had a wide gap throughout this administration
David Weeks, Sunrise International
“Students weighing the decision to enrol in the US this year watched this all unfolded in real time last year,” she added, highlighting the government’s targeting of Harvard for its purported links to China, amid concerns from students that travelling home in the summer would risk their ability to return to the US.
What’s more, in May 2025, secretary of state Marco Rubio vowed to “aggressively revoke” Chinese student visas – spreading concern among Chinese students in the US, though the plans never materialised into policy.
According to Weeks, the environment heading into the 2026 fall cycle is “more positive” than the previous year, which he expects to prove a “historic low for US enrolment of Chinese students”, with the rate of recovery dependent on upcoming policies.
Meanwhile, during the interview Trump doubled down on the economic value of international students from China and elsewhere attending US universities, commenting: “If you want to see a university system die, take half a million people out of it.”
“The top schools will do fine. But your lower schools… the ones that don’t do quite as well, they’ll be dying all over the place,” warned Trump. He added: “More than a conservative, I’m really a common-sense guy”.
Sector stakeholders have welcomed the President’s recognition of international students’ financial contributions to US higher education and have long championed the fact they contributed nearly $55 billion to the US economy in 2024, according to the US department of commerce.
Notably, Levine said Chinese students alone contributed $14.4bn to the US economy in 2024 and supported over 143,000 jobs across the country – more than US exports of soybeans or steel to China.
She said it was “clearly in the United States’ best interests to lower the temperature on international students”, arguing that while the statement was a “start”, the real question is whether the rest of government moves in the same direction.
Similarly, Weeks said he was “fairly confident” the administration wouldn’t single out Chinese students while a trade deal is being negotiated with Beijing.
“But I’d hesitate to read that as a sign of a broader thaw in international student policy overall,” he said. “The structural tensions haven’t gone away, and rhetoric and policy have had a wide gap throughout this administration.”
The comments follow China’s ministry of education releasing data last month appearing to reveal a “reset” of China’s outbound mobility rates, showing numbers drop to 2016 levels – with Levine predicting the continued downturn of Chinese interest if the US government doesn’t enact real policy change.
Stakeholders have highlighted increasing career opportunities for Chinese students graduating from domestic universities, alongside the improved quality of Chinese higher education, with seven universities from Hong Kong and mainland China appearing in this year’s QS world university rankings.
But Weeks questioned the government’s outbound statistics and said they only captured study abroad activity visible to the ministry, and missed students who move from undergraduate to postgraduate overseas, or international school graduates whose credentials aren’t transmitted via the ministry.
“That said, even if I disagree that enrolment is down globally this year, I think the challenges of studying in the US are already baked into Chinese parents’ calculations,” Weeks commented.
