Taking advantage of the Donald Trump U.S. administration's increase in H-1B visa fees for hiring foreign professionals, China's visa policy designed to attract foreign talent has run into internal criticism. Young Chinese who have suffered from a severe job crunch for years are pushing back.
On the 14th (local time), the New York Times (NYT), in an article titled "China wants foreign scientists, but the public says 'no,'" reported, "Starting from the rollout date of visas for foreign scientists, young people online poured out accusations that at a time when getting a job is harder than ever, the government is bringing in foreigners to take Chinese people's jobs."
Earlier, starting on the 1st of this month, China implemented a new K visa for foreign scientists. The K visa is issued to those who have obtained at least a bachelor's degree in science or engineering from a university in China or abroad, or who have experience participating in professional education or research activities in the field. It offers more benefits than a regular visa in terms of the number of entries allowed, validity period, and length of stay.
Online, posts criticizing the K visa are indeed pouring in. According to the NYT, after Wang Huiyao, president of the Beijing think tank Center for China and Globalization (CCG), said he welcomed the K visa, thousands of posts on social media (SNS) criticized him, calling him a "traitor to the nation."
In addition, after Indian media reported the K visa as an alternative to the H-1B visa, racist posts targeting Indians have flooded Chinese online platforms. Because Indians account for more than 70% of U.S. H-1B visa issuances and are core STEM talent, it appears that concerns that they might flock to China in reaction to the H-1B fee hike have led to the backlash.
As the backlash has intensified, the Chinese government has struggled to hide its embarrassment. The People's Daily, a state-run outlet, labeled internal opposition to the K visa as "preposterous" in an editorial and accused opponents of misleading the public. Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the state-run Global Times, also argued that "compared with Japan or South Korea, China has far fewer foreigners," and that the real problem is that China currently has an acute shortage of foreign workers.
The pushback from young Chinese stems from a reality in which youth unemployment has hit a record high amid a slowdown in economic growth. According to China's National Bureau of Statistics, in August the jobless rate for urban residents ages 16 to 24 (excluding students) was 18.9%, up 1.1 percentage points from the previous month, the highest level since the Chinese government began releasing data under a new standard in Dec. 2023. With a record-high 12.2 million or so college graduates flooding the market this summer, the job crunch has worsened further.
A well-known cartoonist who goes by the pen name "Peng Xisenlei" said on SNS, "People of every class, education level, and age I've met all say the same thing: 'It's hard to find a job,'" adding, "Given China's talent pool, I don't think there is any position in any field that 'must be filled by a foreigner.'"
Young Chinese argue that the K visa's requirements are too low. They say that while they face such severe job difficulties that they need a master's degree or higher to get hired, foreigners can work in China with only a bachelor's degree through the K visa. However, the NYT reported that the recent worsening youth job market stems from the downturn in industries such as real estate and education that had hired them en masse in the past, and that China has failed to secure the tens of millions of skilled workers needed in fields such as artificial intelligence (AI).
The NYT said, "This kind of public backlash suggests that even though the United States is cutting research funding and worrying about star scholars leaving, China may still have difficulty attracting the world's top scientists."