Let me post the counterpoint since everyone on the left thinks this is racist and stupid and I don't. In my day I worked for a China-US dual national prof on research with "national security" value. https://twitter.com/Chemjobber/status/1265774490731995137

We had about 1/2 Chinese students in my lab. There was supposed to be a "Chinese Wall" (had to lol) for the DOD-funded research but this didn't happen. Chinese students didn't get name on papers but usually worked on very similar stuff and would gain expertise either way.

In my time, the US still had the expertise and China had all the money. Not sure if true 10-15 yrs later. Every year my prof would go to labs there that had 10x the money we did and collaborate for a few weeks to get their thing to work then get published in good journals.

I don't know if he was part of 1000 talents or whatever other programs they had, my guess is probably not as he had mostly pro-US values, however the end result was the same, best of the best in his field bringing China to US level of capability in that field.

As for why this happens, China STEM education is worlds better than the US. Where I went, I was told to be considered as a Chinese national you needed 980-990 (top 1%) on the Physics GRE. US national was ~750-800 (top 25%). This was due to huge # of qualified Chinese applicants.

If they didn't use affirmative action, there would be no US nationals to put as first author on the DOD-funded work. The Chinese students really were better, which is why schools brought them in, and there would have been a shortage if this supply was cut off.

Everything completely above board, end result is massive gain for China. And this is how China runs us over. They provide something we do not have in the US due to underinvestment: quality STEM students. And they ensure they come back through $ (1000 talents + research $).

In fact replace "China" with "India" and I wouldn't have a single problem with it. They DESERVE to win - they played the long game & with limited initial resources their STEM system far surpasses ours now. Only reason US still competes is we started with a big lead + we are rich.

The problem is that China is a totalitarian cyber-dystopian regime with zero respect for human rights. We CAN'T help them win. Yet those in academia (supposedly leftist which implies pro-human rights) ignore this. Mostly because Chinese undergrad students pay their salaries.

If you cut off the supply of Chinese grad (and undergrad) students what will happen? There will be a shortage, but some of the grad student shortage can be made up from elsewhere, plus less qualified US students. The quality will go down but not by much at top schools.

World-class research will still get done. With more places for US students there will also be more appeal to academia career path which is currently at an all-time low; this will improve US graduate student quality long-term, somewhat.

The bigger problem is the loss of Chinese undergrads (usually second tier students from rich families who couldn't get into best Chinese schools) who are currently propping up budgets everywhere. Academia will have to shrink as a result but maybe a good thing.

End of the day, academia is going to take the money every time unless the US and other Western governments (Australia has same exact issue but worse) step in.