Mike Thompson would go to Beijing with Fulbright funding last year to investigate how the Chinese government is recruiting and training its officials.
When the US stopped all Fulbright programs in China, which are part of the sanctions due to the repression of Hong Kong in Beijing, in July, its Fulbright program offered him and a few other China-focused scholars the opportunity to moving fieldwork to Taiwan. Mr. Thompson, a 30-year-old doctoral student at the University of Michigan whose first trip to China was in 2009, was able to switch his subject to the bureaucracy of Taiwan, but was disappointed with the Trump administration’s decision.
“This is a personal setback for me and a huge setback for the relationship between America and China,” he said.
According to data released by the Institute of International Education in November, the number of American students in China has fallen by more than one-fifth since a peak in 2011-2012. The number of American students in Taiwan increased by almost 55% in the same period.
The move comes amid a weakening in the Washington-Beijing relationship and, according to educators, is ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to them, interest in studying Chinese on American campuses has waned.