On September 26, USCET convened a diverse group of leading China scholars and university representatives for its first working group roundtable. The discussion focused on identifying the current barriers to U.S. student and researcher access to China from the perspective of U.S. academic institutions.
The session opened with reflections on the sharp decline in the number of Americans studying or conducting research in China—from roughly 15,000 a decade ago to just over 1,000 today. Participants emphasized the long-term implications of this gap for academic understanding of China and discussed practical ways to navigate decreased access.
The discussion identified key themes across a range of U.S. institutions. An increasingly constrained research environment in China, combined with heightened compliance concerns, reduced federal funding, and risk-averse administrative cultures, is contributing to a lack of support for China research on U.S. campuses. The erosion of government support for language training and area studies has cascading effects on graduate education pipelines and the capacity of institutions to support fieldwork and international partnerships. While some forms of research remain possible, particularly smaller-scale qualitative work, larger collaborative projects and formal exchange mechanisms have become increasingly difficult.
Despite these challenges, institutions are employing creative approaches to sustain academic engagement: embedding international travel into existing courses, facilitating connections with visiting scholars and PhD students, leveraging regional conferences, and expanding digital research methods. However, these efforts are unevenly distributed and often dependent on individual faculty initiatives and networks, rather than systematic institutional support.
Participants emphasized that meaningful progress will require coordinated action on multiple fronts, including clearer guidance from senior government officials to signal the value of continued educational exchange, development of shared resources and best practices, and diversification of funding sources beyond traditional federal programs. To sustain academic engagement in this complex geopolitical moment, participants emphasized the need for a reaffirmation that scholarly exchange serves the strategic interest of both countries.