Mike Thompson was all set last year to take Fulbright funding to Beijing to investigate how the Chinese government is recruiting and training its officials.
When the US suspended all Fulbright programs in China in July, as part of sanctions over Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong, its Fulbright program offered him and some other China-focused scientists the opportunity to move their fieldwork to Taiwan . Mr. Thompson, a 30-year-old doctoral student at the University of Michigan whose first trip to China was in 2009, was able to switch his subject to the Taiwan bureaucracy, but was disappointed with the Trump administration’s decision.
“It is a personal setback for me and a major setback for the US-China relationship,” he said.
According to data released by the Institute of International Education in November, the number of American students in China has fallen by more than a fifth since a peak in 2011-2012. The number of American students in Taiwan has increased by nearly 55% over the same period.
The shift comes amid a deterioration in the relationship between Washington and Beijing and predates the Covid-19 pandemic, according to educators. Interest in studying Chinese on American campuses has cooled, they said.