Bush Moving to Kill Bill to Aid China Students

The Bush Administration, demonstrating its desire to preserve ties with the Chinese government, has launched an intensive drive on Capitol Hill to kill legislation that would allow tens of thousands of Chinese students to stay on in this country indefinitely.

The measure has been an overriding preoccupation of Chinese students in this country since the Beijing massacre in June, and it had seemed to be heading toward enactment with little controversy.

But as the current congressional session nears an end, the Administration is arguing that the measure should be killed because it might prompt Chinese retaliation.

“Based on what we know of Chinese (government) thinking, passage of this legislation would threaten future educational exchange programs between the United States and China,” a State Department official said.

The issue is not merely one of visas but of Chinese politics. The fate of the legislation will help determine to what extent Chinese students in this country can participate in the pro-democracy movement.

Many students contend that as long as the requirement to return to China hangs over their heads, they will be too afraid to engage in any political activity because the Chinese regime might retaliate against them when they go home.

“If we do not get any protection from the United States government and Congress, the result will be that the Chinese democracy movement in this country will perish,” Luo Zhexi , chairman of the Harvard University Chinese Students Assn., said Wednesday.

The measure under attack by the Administration would lift an existing visa requirement that Chinese students and scholars must return to their homeland for two years after completing their studies in America.

Students complain that the requirement permits the Chinese government to retain effective political control over them throughout their studies here.

Using a special computer network called “Visanet” and planning their lobbying strategies in campus-to-campus teleconferences, Chinese students in the United States have made passage of the bill their top priority.

The bill, originally sponsored by California Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), passed the House and Senate last summer in slightly different forms and was assigned to a conference committee to iron out the differences.

Throughout the summer and fall, the Bush Administration kept its distance from the measure, voicing mild reservations about the possible impact but saying for the record that the White House would not object to the bill’s passage.

But as memories of the Chinese regime’s bloody crackdown in Beijing on June 3-4 becomes more distant, the Administration is arguing that the entire measure should be scuttled because its passage would mean that no future Chinese students will be allowed to come to the United States.

“The whole bill has got us concerned now,” said one Administration lobbyist. “This bill is going to have the effect of shutting down these educational programs with China.”

The Chinese government already has terminated the Fulbright program, which provides for the exchange of scholars between China and the United States, for the current academic year. According to U.S. officials, the Chinese government refuses even to discuss a possible resumption of the program next year.

In a prepared statement, the Chinese Embassy in Washington said: “Approval given by the U.S. Congress to Chinese students of extending their stay without legal restriction in the United States will damage Sino-U.S. exchanges in education.”

An estimated 40,000 Chinese students currently reside in the United States. The bill in question would affect about 32,000 who are classified by the Immigration and Naturalization Service as having come here with the official sponsorship of the Chinese government.

The remaining Chinese students, whose studies are supported solely by their families or through other private means, are placed in a different visa category and are not required to return to China.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington asserted that “it is a basic point of the policy of any country on sending students abroad to encourage students and scholars funded by the government to return home after completion of their studies.”

Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) confirmed that he and other Administration supporters in the Senate are now reconsidering the entire measure.

Last month, the House approved a separate bill that would suspend for three years the deportation of illegal immigrants from China, El Salvador and Nicaragua. That bill is not expected to pass the Senate this year.

Chinese students say that while the second bill would give them three years of protection, it would still leave them subject to the requirement that they must eventually return home.