In Attacks on Harvard, Chinese See Yet Another Reason to Write Off the U.S.

If the Trump administration succeeds in blocking Harvard from enrolling international students, the hardest-hit group would be students from China, who make up the school’s biggest share of current students from overseas.

The consequences are likely to extend far beyond those select few who could gain entry to the prestigious university. The move could reshape the broader relationship between the two countries by cutting off one of the few remaining reasons that people in China still admire the United States.

The flow of students from China to the United States has long been one of the most reliable ballasts in the two countries’ relationship, despite growing geopolitical tensions and China’s superpower ambitions. China until recently was by far the biggest source of international students to the United States, sending hundreds of thousands of people each year. Even as other symbols of the United States — Hollywood, for example, or iPhones — lost their cachet for many Chinese, American universities remained a source of aspiration, even veneration.

Elite universities like Harvard played a particularly important role in that admiration. In recent years, even student exchanges have started to suffer from the two countries’ frosty ties, as many have worried about anti-Chinese discrimination, difficulty securing visas or crime. But schools like Harvard were an exception: They remained as attractive as ever to Chinese students, who were willing to overlook other concerns for the promise of a best-in-the-world education.

Now, even that beacon is in question.

“Everyone comes here with the ideal of changing the world,” said a current Chinese graduate student at Harvard, who requested anonymity for fear of endangering her visa. “But when I’m trying to understand the world, the world shuts me out.” She said she now wants to return to China after graduation.

In a sign of how tense the relationship between the two superpowers has become, the reaction among many Chinese on social media — where the Harvard news was a top trending hashtag on Friday — was mixed. There was concern and outrage. But in some quarters, there was also grim acceptance or even glee.