By SCMP
Published Jan 15, 2026
Enrollment from mainland China grew 4.5% in 2025 even as Washington tightened vetting, revoked thousands of student visas
Students walk on campus at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., Nov. 19, 2025, as it opens a probe into individuals mentioned in the Jeffrey Epstein files recently released by Congress, after the documents showed a close relationship between its former president, Larry Summers, and the late convicted sex offender. Reuters-Yonhap
Enrollment at Harvard for Chinese students rose in the autumn from a year earlier, even as the Donald Trump administration moved to rein in visas for them and limit foreign enrollment and funding at the prestigious university.
The number of students from mainland China rose from 1,390 in autumn 2024 to 1,452 in autumn 2025 — an increase of 4.5 percent — according to Harvard data released on Friday.
Hong Kong student enrollment rose from 68 to 73, while enrollment from Macau, which is in the single digits, decreased.
The increase in Chinese students is notable as Harvard’s foreign student population had faced significant scrutiny in the early months of the second Trump administration, with U.S. Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem publicly citing its engagement with China as a reason for the crackdown.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in May said that the State Department and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would work to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students with Communist Party ties or in “critical fields” and to tighten vetting of applicants from mainland China and Hong Kong. Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have introduced measures in the past year to curb Chinese student access to the U.S., citing concerns over potential espionage.
Washington and Beijing have been locked in geopolitical fights on everything from technology to tariffs. Beijing, for its part, has issued study abroad warnings for its students against U.S. states that have imposed restrictions on engagement with China and accused Washington of disproportionate scrutiny of its nationals at U.S. borders.
Harvard, which has been supportive of its foreign students despite being the main target of the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape higher education, is continuing its fight against the administration with two legal challenges over funding cuts and foreign student enrollment restrictions pending a final outcome.
The administration’s campaign against Harvard started with a focus on alleged campus antisemitism but widened into an attack on diversity programmes and perceived political bias. Last year, it froze billions in research funding and blocked the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students, demanding changes in governance, hiring and admissions.
David Weeks, co-founder and chief operating officer of Sunrise International, a firm that advises overseas universities on recruiting Chinese students, said that the increase was a “meaningful signal for Harvard and to a slightly lesser extent for U.S. higher education.”
Elite U.S. brands still have a strong gravitational pull, especially in China, Weeks said. “Many will apply to third-country options as hedges, but if they land their U.S. ‘reach’ school, they often still take it because the perceived long-term credential value is hard to match.”
Weeks added that Chinese students’ risk tolerance is higher than many observers assume.
“Overall Chinese enrollment in the U.S. is down from its 2019 peak, but that decline likely reflects the more risk-averse segment of Chinese students shifting to alternatives … Many Chinese families have lived through prior U.S.–China ‘lurch cycles’ like the 2018 trade war, so they evaluate shocks differently compared to markets like India,” he said.
Students walk past Widener Library at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., Nov. 19, 2025, as it opens a probe into individuals mentioned in the Jeffrey Epstein files recently released by Congress, after the documents showed a close relationship between its former president, Larry Summers, and the late convicted sex offender. Reuters-Yonhap
Harvard saw a slight increase in overall foreign student enrollment compared with the autumn of 2024. The proportion of international students at Harvard in the autumn of 2025 rose slightly to 28.1 per cent, or 6,836 students — a roughly 1 per cent increase reflecting a gain of 43 foreign students.
While small, it is a change that goes against national trends. Foreign enrollment at U.S. universities overall declined by about 1 percent over a comparable period, while new foreign student enrollment fell by 17 percent, according to partial data from the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors report, which is sponsored by the State Department.
The second Trump administration has taken numerous steps to restrict international students, including new social media vetting procedures during visa processing, travel bans, threats to deport foreigners for expressing political speech and proposals to change the H-1B programme — a key work visa often used by international graduates.
On Monday, the State Department said it had revoked over 100,000 visas since Trump took office last January, among them some 8,000 student visas.
Trump has spoken out against Harvard, but in contrast to others in his administration, has voiced support for Chinese and other international students, calling foreign enrollment a business matter and saying he would accept 600,000 Chinese students.
Chinese students remain the largest foreign student group at Harvard. Nationwide, they are the second largest at about 266,000, behind students from India.
Since the rhetoric against them picked up last year, students from China have expressed mixed feelings towards going to the U.S., with some saying it did not change their plans, others looking elsewhere. Some note that it is difficult to take specific announcements seriously because of the frequency of policy changes.
It is not the first time they have been targeted. Under his first term, Trump issued a presidential proclamation restricting students with ties to certain universities in China from coming to the U.S.
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