China warns its students of violence in US

China has advised its citizens to ­reconsider visiting or studying in the US.

Chinese students in the US have been warned about the country’s escalating violence. Picture: AFP.

China has advised its citizens to ­reconsider visiting or studying in the US, a sign that Beijing might be targeting the lucrative tourism and education sectors as it tries to pressure Washington in their trade dispute.

The warning comes after ­China’s Education Ministry on Monday cited delays and rejections by the US in issuing visas; it urged “students and scholars to strengthen risk assessments ­before going abroad to study”.

On Tuesday the Foreign Ministry noted many complaints from Chinese citizens about interrogations by US law-enforcement agents when entering, leaving and while inside the US, and it advised Chinese people travelling to the US to raise their safety awareness. A spokesman for the Ministry of Culture and Tourism also issued a safety warning, citing America’s frequent “shootings, robberies and thefts”.

The US embassy declined to comment.

The Trump administration has raised its scrutiny of visas for students from China in the past two years and voiced concerns about academic exchanges serving as a conduit for espionage. Chinese scholars have complained about the difficulty in obtaining visas or their existing visas being cancelled.

The US has also slowed ­approvals for the nation’s semiconductor companies to hire ­Chinese nationals for advanced engineering jobs, industry insiders say, as the administration tries to protect US intellectual property.

China’s advisories are being ­issued as the US and China pile new punitive tariffs on each other’s goods and exchange ­recriminations for an impasse in talks to resolve the trade conflict.

In recent weeks Beijing has sought other ways to pressure the US, with officials, for example, suggesting China might bar ­exports to the US of processed rare earths, which are used in many hi-tech goods. It has used travel advisories and safety warnings in past diplomatic quarrels, issuing notices in the past year against Sweden, Canada and New Zealand.

“These warnings are political in nature. They recognise the ­importance of Chinese tourists, and it’s one way that they can impact on policies or on global politics,” said Marie Tulloch, senior client services manager at Emerging Communications, a British-based Chinese marketing consul­ting firm.

Tuesday’s travel warnings fell on the 30th anniversary of the deadly crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrators, and the occasion also sparked a sharp exchange ­between the US and China. More than 180,000 demonstrators held a candlelit vigil in Hong Kong protesters

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged China to “make a full, public accounting of those killed or missing” in 1989. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang shot back: “These lunatic ravings and babbling nonsense will only end up in the trash can of history.”

China is the largest source of both tourism dollars and international students to the US, according to US International Trade Administration and the Institute of International Education.

As more Chinese students flocked to the US during the past decade, their encounters with crime have been a frequent topic in Chinese media.

As relations have soured with the US more recently, state media has also focused on gun crime and other violence.

China’s consulate in New York issued a safety warning on Tuesday, saying Massachusetts authorities notified it of the recent killing of a Chinese citizen.

Ms Tulloch said Chinese tourists and students were an economic force, with their spending having a big impact on retailers, and luxury brands in particular.

For each Chinese student who goes to study and live abroad, she said, they would bring three visitors to that destination each year on average, and each visitor would spend more than $US2000.

During the 2017-18 school year, 363,341 Chinese students moved to the US to study, a 3.6 per cent ­rise year-over-year, the lowest growth rate for Chinese students moving abroad in the past five years of data, according to the Institute of International Education.

The Wall Street Journal