Xiao Chen showed up at the US consulate in Shanghai on Thursday morning, hours after Washington announced it would “aggressively” revoke visas for Chinese students.

The 22-year-old had a visa appointment: she would go to Michigan in the fall to study communications.

After a “friendly” conversation, she was informed that her application had been rejected. No reason was given.

“I feel like a drifting weed, tossed by the wind and storm,” she said, using a common Chinese expression to describe her sense of uncertainty and helplessness.

She was hopeful because she already had the acceptance letter. And she thought she’d been spared the bombshell announcements of the past few days.

First, the Trump administration decided to end Harvard University’s ability to admit international students, a move that has since been blocked in court.

And then Washington announced it had suspended visa appointments for all foreign students.

But now, Chen is ready for Plan B. “If I end up not getting a visa, I’ll probably take a gap year. Then I’ll wait and see if things improve next year.”

A valid visa might not be enough, she adds, because students with visas can be “held up at the airport and deported.”

“It’s bad for all Chinese students. The only difference is how bad it is.”

It’s been a disheartening week for international students in the U.S., and perhaps even harder for the estimated 280,000 Chinese students who watched their country be pointed out.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Harvard of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the measure against Chinese students in the U.S.would include “those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

This could affect a wide swath of them, given that Communist Party affiliation is common among officials, entrepreneurs, business owners, and even artists and celebrities in China.

Beijing called the Trump administration’s measures a “politically motivated and discriminatory action,” and its Foreign Ministry lodged a formal protest.

At one time, China sent the largest number of foreign students to U.S. campuses. But those numbers declined as relations between the two countries deteriorated.

A more powerful and increasingly assertive Beijing is now battling Washington for supremacy in virtually everything from trade to technology.

Trump’s first term had already posed problems for Chinese students. In 2020, he signed an order barring Chinese students and researchers with ties to Beijing’s military from obtaining U.S. visas. That order remained in place under President Joe Biden. Washington never clarified what constitutes “ties” to the military, leading many students to have their visas revoked or be turned away at U.S. borders, sometimes without adequate explanation. One of them, who declined to be identified, said that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) canceled his visa upon arrival in Boston in August 2023. He had been accepted into a postdoctoral program at Harvard University. She was set to study regenerative medicine with a specialization in breast cancer and had completed her master's degree at a military-affiliated research institution in China.

She claimed she was not a member of the Communist Party and that her research had nothing to do with the military.

“They asked me what the relationship was between my research and China's defense affairs,” she told the BBC at the time. “I said, ‘How can breast cancer have anything to do with national defense? If you know, please tell me.’”

She believes she never had a chance because officials had already made up their minds. He recalled one of them asking him, “Did Xi Jinping buy your suitcase?”

What was surprising, or even shocking, then slowly became normalized as more and more Chinese students struggled to get visas or admission to study science and technology at American universities.

Cao, a psychology major whose research focuses on neuroscience, has spent the past academic year applying to doctoral programs in the United States.

He graduated from top-tier universities, with credentials that could send him to an Ivy League university (the most prestigious in the US). But of the more than 10 universities she applied to, only one made her an offer.

Trump’s cuts to biomedical research didn’t help, but distrust surrounding Chinese researchers was also a factor.

Allegations and rumors of spying, especially on sensitive matters, have plagued Chinese nationals at American universities in recent years, even derailing some careers.

“One of the professors even told me, ‘We hardly ever make offers to Chinese students these days, so I can’t give you an interview,’” Cao told the BBC in February.

“I feel like a grain in an hourglass. I can’t do anything.”

For those who graduated from American universities, returning to China hasn’t been easy either.

Once, they were hailed as a bridge to the rest of the world. Now, they find their once-coveted degrees no longer generate the same reaction.

Chen Jian, who preferred not to reveal his real name, said he quickly realized his undergraduate degree from an American university had become an obstacle.

When he returned in 2020, he interned at a state-owned bank and asked a supervisor if there was a chance he could stay on.

The supervisor didn’t say this directly, but Chen got the message: “Employees should have local degrees. People like me (with foreign degrees) won’t even get a reply.”

He later realized that “there really weren’t any colleagues with overseas college degrees in the department.”

He returned to the United States, earned a master’s degree at Johns Hopkins University, and now works at Chinese tech giant Baidu.

But despite his degree from a prestigious American university, Chen doesn’t feel he has an advantage because of the stiff competition from graduates in China.

What hasn't helped is the distrust surrounding foreign graduates. Beijing has stepped up warnings about foreign spies, cautioning the civilian population to be on the lookout for suspicious figures.

In April, prominent Chinese businesswoman Dong Mingzhu told shareholders in a closed-door meeting that her company, appliance maker Gree Electric, will “never” hire foreign-educated Chinese “because there are spies among them.”

“I don't know who is and who isn't,” Dong said, in comments that were leaked and went viral.

Days later,The CIA released promotional videos encouraging Chinese officials dissatisfied with the government to become spies and provide classified information. “Their fate is in their hands,” the video read.

The distrust of foreigners as the United States and China grow increasingly estranged is a surprising turn of events for many Chinese who remember growing up in a very different country.

Zhang Ni, who also did not want to reveal her real name, says she was “very shocked” by Dong’s comments.

The 24-year-old recently graduated with a degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York. She says she’s “not interested in working at Gree,” but what surprised her was the change in attitude. The fact that so many Chinese companies “don’t like anything that can be associated with being international” stands in stark contrast to Zhang’s own childhood: one “filled with talk of the Olympics and the World Expo.” “Whenever we saw foreigners, my mom would encourage me to go talk to them to practice my English,” she says. That willingness to exchange ideas and learn about the outside world appears to be waning in China, many say. And the United States, which once attracted so many young Chinese, is no longer as welcoming. Zhang can’t help but recall a joke a friend made at a farewell dinner before she left for the United States. It was a flippant comment that now sums up the fear in both Washington and Beijing: “Don’t become a spy.” Additional reporting by Kelly Ng

Subscribe here to our new newsletter to receive a selection of our best content of the week every Friday.