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Opinion | China-West academic decoupling does the world no favours
Dismantling the bridges of scientific and academic cooperation built over decades is a choice the world cannot afford at this crucial moment
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The recent decision by ETH Zurich, Switzerland’s top-ranked university, to restrict admission of students from China and certain other nations marks a troubling milestone in the growing academic divide between China and the West.
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ETH Zurich recently announced stringent security screening measures which affect applicants from 23 countries, including China, to its master’s and doctoral programmes. The policy calls for scrutiny not just of an applicant’s nationality but their previous education, funding sources and intended field of study.
In September, Georgia Institute of Technology in the US announced it was ending its long-standing collaboration with China’s Tianjin University. It cited government security concerns after Tianjin University was added to the US Department of Commerce’s Entity List in 2020, making the partnership “no longer tenable”.
These moves highlight how deeply geopolitical tensions are reshaping global academic exchange. The deterioration of educational ties between China and Western countries foreshadows broader repercussions for scientific progress and international understanding.
During the past decade, US-China educational ties have transformed dramatically to a point where the landscape is now one of reciprocal distrust and growing barriers. US students studying in China plummeted from a peak of nearly 25,000 in 2012 to a mere 700 last year, while Chinese students’ enrolment in US universities hit a decade low in 2023.
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Now, this academic decoupling is spreading to Europe. ETH Zurich’s restrictions are among the most extensive imposed by a Western university so far, but similar policies with regard to foreign students have emerged at universities in Germany and the Netherlands.
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