President Trump’s first term gave us the “China Initiative,” a government program intended to root out Chinese espionage. The result was ethnic profiling of Chinese and Asian American researchers, flimsy cases that were eventually dropped and no prosecutions of scholars for spying or theft of secrets. President Joe Biden wisely eliminated it.

特朗普总统的第一个任期给了我们“中国行动计划”，目的是铲除中国的间谍活动。结果却是对华裔和亚裔美国研究人员的种族形象定性，一些站不住脚的案件最终被撤销，没有学者因间谍活动或窃取机密而受到起诉。拜登总统明智地取消了该计划。

Mr. Trump’s current administration is back at it, however, demonizing Chinese citizens once again with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement on May 28 that the United States would “aggressively revoke” the visas of Chinese students. While it appears that Mr. Trump’s team may have backed off on that measure for now after trade negotiations last week, the threat lingers and damage may have been done already.

但是，特朗普的现任政府故技重施，再次妖魔化中国公民，国务卿马可·鲁比奥今年5月28日宣布，美国将“大力撤销”中国留学生的签证。虽然上周的贸易谈判后，特朗普团队似乎暂时放弃了这项措施，但威胁依然存在，损害可能已经造成。

Targeting Chinese students, researchers and academics was a horrible idea the first time around and still is. It would harm America academically, economically and strategically. It will leave us more ignorant about our biggest rival and fuel paranoia while doing little to safeguard sensitive information.

上一次把中国学生、研究人员和学者作为打击对象是极其糟糕的主意，如今亦然。这种做法将在学术、经济、战略上给美国造成损害。这样做将让我们对最大竞争对手更加无知，助长偏执情绪，同时对保护敏感信息也起不了多少作用。

We should of course be concerned about China’s wide-ranging espionage efforts.

我们当然应该对中国的大范围间谍活动有所警惕。

Much of this is focused on the U.S. government or corporations. But universities are targets too. Chinese government tactics are known to include pressuring students from China to gather information on American know-how and innovation from their U.S. colleges, coupled with threats against their families in China if they don’t comply. Innocent students like these are China’s victims, too. We should be devising ways to protect their academic freedom and safety while on U.S. soil. Excluding them en masse blames the victim and throws the baby out with the bath water.

这些间谍活动主要针对美国政府或企业。但大学也是间谍活动的目标。中国政府的已知手段包括向中国留学生施压，叫他们从美国同事那里收集有关技术和创新的信息，如果不照做的话，他们在中国的家人就会受到威胁。这些无辜的学生同样也是中国的受害者。我们应该设法保护他们在美国土地上的学术自由和安全。采取一刀切的方式把他们排斥在外无异于责备受害者，好坏不分地一并清除。

Very little of the research that happens on American campuses is classified, anyway. Many universities forbid it under the principle that academic research should be openly available. Some areas of study are more sensitive than others, but U.S. restrictions and screening procedures already block or restrict visas for Chinese researchers in certain fields. A 2020 Trump executive order, for example, limits entry by graduate students with past or present links to Chinese entities that the United States determines are involved with technologies that have potential military use.

事实上，美国校园内开展的研究极少涉及机密。许多大学基于学术研究成果应该公众共享原则，明令禁止涉密研究。虽然有些研究领域确实较为敏感，但美国现有的的限制和筛选程序早已对特定领域的中国研究人员实施签证封锁或限制。例如，2020年的一项特朗普行政命令明确规定，对于美国认定涉及潜在军事用途技术的中国实体，无论是过去还是现在与它们存在关联的研究生，其入境将受到严格限制。

Mr. Rubio’s announcement added worryingly vague new criteria to these already robust standards.

令人担忧的是，鲁比奥的宣布在这些本来就很严格的标准之上增加了新的模糊标准。

He singled out students “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party,” which is almost meaningless for a country where the party runs everything. Just as every American is connected to the U.S. government in some way — getting a driver’s license, paying taxes, going to public schools — dealing with the Communist Party is a fact of life for Chinese citizens, not an ideological commitment.

他专门提到“与中国共产党有关系”的学生，对一个中共掌管所有事情的国家来说，这几乎毫无意义。正如每个美国人都以某种方式与美国政府产生联系，如获得驾照、纳税、在公立学校读书，与共产党打交道是中国公民现实生活的一部分，而非意识形态立场的体现。

Mr. Rubio also mentioned students “studying in critical fields.” Does that mean only sensitive technologies, or would the Trump administration’s typically maximalist approach sweep in the social sciences, international relations, even business and finance?

鲁比奥还提及“在关键领域学习”的学生。这是仅指敏感技术领域呢，还是像特朗普政府一贯的极端做法那样，把社会科学、国际关系乃至商业和金融包括进来？

These overly broad and ultimately unnecessary criteria look suspiciously like Mr. Trump’s team may in fact be laying the groundwork to fulfill yet another objective of Project 2025, the right-wing manifesto that has guided Mr. Trump’s second term. The president’s immigration crackdown, elimination of diversity programs, rollback of climate protection measures and other major policy moves are all key items on Project 2025’s wish list, which also calls for the United States to “significantly reduce or eliminate” visas for Chinese students and researchers.

这些过于宽泛且最终没有必要的标准令人不禁怀疑，特朗普团队也许正在为实现“2025计划”的又一个目标奠定基础，这份右翼宣言已成为特朗普第二的任期的施政纲领。特朗普打击移民、取消多元化项目、取消保护气候的措施，以及其他重大政策举措，都是“2025计划”希望一览表上的主要事项，该计划也要求美国“大幅减少或取消”发给中国留学生和研究人员的签证。

Doing so would hurt America in several ways.

这样做会在多个方面伤害美国。

Take trade. Mr. Trump is obsessed with America’s trade deficit with China. But the more than 277,000 Chinese studying legally in the United States contributed more than $14 billion to the economy in 2023, on par with the value of some of American’s top exports to China.

以贸易为例。特朗普为美中贸易逆差耿耿于怀。但2023年，在美国合法学习的27.7万多名中国学生为美国经济贡献了140多亿美元，与一些美国对华最大出口产品的价值相当。

The United States also has benefited from a long-term “brain gain” of Chinese talent. More than 55,000 Chinese nationals graduated with STEM Ph.D.s from U.S. universities from 2001 to 2015, 90 percent of whom stayed in the United States after graduation. Chinese student enrollment in the United States is falling sharply, however, from about 370,000 in 2019, in the wake of the pandemic and deteriorating U.S.-China relations. Restricting Chinese student visas would further erode this American technological advantage.

美国也从来自中国的长期“人才流入”中受益。2001年至2015年，超过5.5万名中国留学生从美国大学获得STEM博士学位，其中90%的人在毕业后留在了美国。然而，由于新冠疫情和中美关系恶化，中国在美留学生人数从2019年的37万人大幅下降。限制中国学生签证将进一步削弱美国的这种技术优势。

I have firsthand experience with paranoid academic barriers that end up hurting the country that erects them.

对此我深有体会，偏执的学术壁垒最终会伤害到设置壁垒的国家。

I contributed to a 2004 book on China’s Uyghurs, one of the native peoples of Xinjiang. Uyghurs are a highly sensitive topic for the Communist Party, which seeks to prevent foreign scholars from writing about them because of a history of Uyghur discontent with Chinese rule. China denounced the book as an attempt to incite Uyghur separatism and subsequently refused to grant visas to me and several other American professors who were co-authors.

2004年，我曾经参与撰写了一本关于中国维吾尔人的书，维吾尔人是新疆的原住民群体之一。维吾尔人对共产党来说是一个高度敏感的话题，由于他们历史上对中国统治的不满，共产党试图阻止外国学者展开相关研究。中国谴责这本书企图煽动维吾尔分裂主义，随后拒绝向我和其他几位撰写该书的美国教授发放签证。

This backfired for China. We continued to do research, publish books and teach, but we couldn’t visit China and have the frank in-person exchanges we once had with Chinese scholars in Beijing who advised the government. The soured academic atmosphere also meant Chinese experts were no longer welcomed to overseas conferences and other academic exchanges in Uyghur and Xinjiang studies. China lost an important channel through which its scholars accessed new research and kept tabs on how its Xinjiang policies played overseas.

这一做法对中国来说适得其反。我们继续做研究，出版著作和教学，但我们不能访问中国，不能像以前那样，与在北京为政府出谋献策的中国学者进行坦率的面对面交流。恶劣的学术氛围也意味着中国专家不再受邀参加海外维吾尔和新疆研究领域的会议和其他学术交流。中国失去了一个重要的渠道，通过这个渠道，中国学者本可以接触最新研究成果，并掌握海外对其新疆政策的反应。

When it emerged in 2018 that China had interned more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in re-education centers, China was unprepared for the global outrage that followed. Chinese officials in Washington scoffed when I told them early on that the world would see these as concentration camps and the country’s treatment of Uyghurs as crimes against humanity and genocide. China fumbled its response, at first issuing flat denials that were transparently false — satellite images of the re-education facilities were available — and repeatedly changing its story. China’s international reputation was severely tarnished, and the United States imposed sanctions.

2018年，当中国在再教育中心拘禁了100多万维吾尔人和其他穆斯林少数民族的消息传出时，中国对随之而来的全球愤怒毫无准备。我很早就告诉在华盛顿的中国官员，世界将把这些拘禁营视为集中营，将把中国对待维吾尔人的方式视为反人类罪和种族灭绝，当时他们嗤之以鼻。中国的回应很笨拙，一开始断然否认，这显然站不住脚——再教育设施的卫星图像是明摆着的——然后一再改变说法。结果，中国的国际声誉受到了严重损害，美国也对其实施了制裁。

By constricting academic exchange, China impaired its ability to anticipate the reaction of the United States and the world. If the United States does the same to Chinese scholars, it risks falling into the same trap.

通过限制学术交流，中国削弱了预测美国和世界反应的能力。如果美国对中国学者采取同样的做法，恐将重蹈覆辙。

From a hard-nosed U.S. security standpoint, we should be learning all that we can about China. That means maintaining connections, not severing them. Yet Mr. Trump seems bent on blinding us. In his first term he abolished the Fulbright academic exchange program with China, which had sent thousands of American and Chinese students between the two countries for decades. His new administration has gutted Radio Free Asia — whose reporting on Xinjiang, Tibet and China has long been relied upon by Congress and the White House — and canceled funding for efforts to monitor Chinese human rights abuses.

从务实的美国国家安全立场来看，我们应该尽可能地了解中国。这意味着保持联系，而不是切断联系。然而，特朗普似乎执意要让我们自我蒙蔽。在他的第一个任期内，他废除了与中国的富布赖特学术交流项目，该项目几十年来促成了成千上万的两国学生互访。他的新一届政府削弱了自由亚洲电台——国会和白宫长期倚仗该电台对新疆、西藏和中国的报道——并取消了对监督中国侵犯人权行为的资助。

Revoking Chinese student visas would further cut America off from its biggest rival, sacrificing security for spite, knowledge for paranoia and differing little from the Chinese Communist Party’s isolationism. And it destroys the empathy that America should be showing toward fellow human beings in a country that accounts for one-sixth of humanity.

撤销中国留学生签证将进一步切断美国与最大竞争对手的联系，这种为报复对手而牺牲安全、因偏执而放弃追求知识的做法与中国共产党的孤立主义几乎没有区别。这也摧毁了美国本应展现的人道关怀——面对一个占全球六分之一人口的国家中的普通人，我们理应怀有同理心。

A self-confident America should not fear people from around the world, even rival countries, coming to access the knowledge that all of humankind needs to address our mounting global problems together. Learning is not spying.

一个自信的美国不应该害怕来自世界各地的人们，哪怕是来自竞争对手国家的人前来获取全人类需要的知识，以共同应对日益严重的全球性问题。学习不是间谍活动。