Trump administration moves to block Chinese officials from studying in US, targeting Harvard's longstanding role

For decades, Chinese government agencies have sent mid-career and senior bureaucrats to US schools to study Western public policy and governance. Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government has played a central role in this exchange, hosting future senior Chinese leaders such as Liu He, China’s top trade negotiator under Xi Jinping, and former Vice President Li Yuanchao. Li credited his Harvard training for helping manage a deadly crisis in Nanjing during his time as a city leader.

One popular mid-career programme, “China’s Leaders in Development,” launched in 1998, featured joint instruction from Harvard and Beijing’s Tsinghua University. Harvard professors have also gained high-level access in Beijing; former Kennedy School dean Graham Allison has met with Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

The school’s reputation in China is so significant that it’s often dubbed an “overseas party school” by Chinese commentators—comparing it to elite domestic academies that train rising Communist Party officials.

Targeting academia in the US-China rivalry

The Trump administration’s crackdown reflects rising suspicion that Beijing uses American universities to groom its officials and gain insight into US systems, potentially to undermine national interests. Officials have cited Communist Party ties among Chinese students and researchers as a security threat, particularly in sensitive academic fields.

In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning condemned the US measures, saying they "seriously damaged the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese students."

The move also underscores the administration’s broader campaign to reshape the culture of US academia, which many conservatives say leans too far left and has enabled foreign influence. The potential revocation of Harvard’s ability to admit foreign students reflects a major escalation in that campaign.

A generation of Chinese elites at US schools

Harvard’s influence on Chinese governance extends beyond formal training programmes. Children of top Communist Party leaders have studied at the university, including Xi Jinping’s daughter, Xi Mingze, who enrolled under an alias in the early 2010s. Bo Guagua, the son of disgraced former Politburo member Bo Xilai, earned a master’s in public policy from the Kennedy School in 2012.

Other US institutions—including Stanford, Syracuse, the University of Maryland, and Rutgers—have also hosted Chinese officials for executive training. But none have carried the same status in Beijing as Harvard, which some observers say offers both symbolic and practical access to American political models.

A rupture decades in the making

Beijing’s practice of sending officials to study abroad began in earnest in the 1990s, part of a broader effort to professionalize its bureaucracy by exposing leaders to international best practices. Thousands of Chinese officials have since graduated from overseas programmes, including Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, which hosts the widely attended “Mayors’ Class.”

Now, those long-standing exchanges may be coming to an end.

As US-China tensions intensify and higher education becomes a new battleground, the Trump administration's latest actions signal a deepening break from previous engagement policies—and place Harvard squarely in the political crosshairs.