Classrooms are the original diplomacy

On May 16, I found myself at the Gies Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, watching my daughter's graduation ceremony. The commencement speaker was Sean Evans, host of Hot Ones and a recent addition to TIME magazine's inaugural TIME100 Creators list of the 100 most influential digital voices.

The next day, I attended a more intimate ceremony at the Krannert Center, where graduates were called by name one by one. What struck me, and every parent there, was the frequency of Chinese names being called.

Families cheered, grandparents who had crossed the Pacific lifted their phones with trembling hands, mothers wept and fathers waved orange-and-blue banners. For a few days, the cornfields of central Illinois resonated with the sound of Mandarin and the unmistakable language of pride.

Such scenes are not surprising at UIUC. With nearly 6,000 Chinese students enrolled last year, it hosts one of the largest Chinese student communities at any university in the United States. Chinese students make up roughly half of UIUC's entire international population, and about one in 10 of all students on campus.

These scenes are replicated across campuses from Boston to Los Angeles, and from New York to Chicago. They may get overlooked because tariffs and summits dominate the headlines, but they are, in their own quiet way, the most important interactions between China and the US.

For nearly 30 years, I have worked to build bridges between the two countries through students, scholars, business delegations, and people who have grown up with very different assumptions.

Throughout this time, I have seen the relationship between Beijing and Washington fluctuate between warmth, suspicion, hope, and tension. What I have learned is that policies shift with each election cycle, but the human bonds formed in classrooms and dormitories endure. They are the strongest infrastructure of peace we have.

This is why US President Donald Trump's remarks during his recent state visit to Beijing deserve more attention. In a Fox News interview broadcast from Beijing, the US president countered voices within his political base by saying,"It's a very insulting thing to tell a country we don't want your people in our schools." He noted that if Chinese students stopped coming, lower-tier US universities would be hit hardest. His proposal to admit up to 600,000 Chinese students — more than double the current enrollment — may be ambitious, but it is based on a sound principle.

The numbers tell a sobering story. According to the Institute of International Education's Open Doors report, the US hosted a record 1.18 million international students in the 2024-25 academic year, contributing nearly $55 billion to the US economy and supporting more than 355,000 jobs in the country.

But within that record total, Chinese enrollment has been declining. At its peak in 2019-20, roughly 372,000 Chinese students were studying in the US. By 2024-25, that figure had fallen to 265,919 — a decline of nearly 29 percent in five years. For the first time since 2009, India has surpassed China as the largest source of international students, with 363,019 students. New international enrollments in fall 2025 dropped 17 percent year over year.

The reasons for the decline are complex: the pandemic, visa issues, public discourse that often treats Chinese students as suspects rather than guests, the rise of excellent Chinese universities at home, and families' concerns about whether their children will be safe and welcomed.

For the US, this drop is not abstract. In Illinois alone, international students contributed $2.4 billion to the state economy in 2023-24. Their tuition dollars subsidize US classmates, they fill graduate programs in fields such as engineering, computer science and mathematics, and their research contributes to US patents and companies.

However, the deeper loss is not financial, but human. Over the decades, I have witnessed countless friendships between Chinese and US students — friendships that have outlasted graduations, weddings, career changes, and the chill of headlines. None of these relationships made the news. But all of them are the news, if we know how to read it.

In November 2023, President Xi Jinping invited 50,000 young Americans to visit China on exchange programs over five years. Thousands have already made the journey, learning the language, meeting families, and exploring places their grandparents could never have imagined visiting. This is the architecture of peace being built, one student at a time.

Education is the original form of diplomacy. It predates treaties and outlasts them. A trade agreement can be renegotiated in an afternoon; a friendship formed in a freshman dormitory can last 50 years, quietly shaping decisions in boardrooms and government offices long after the diploma is framed.

The graduation ceremonies taking place across the US this month are not just personal milestones. They are evidence of a partnership that, despite every obstacle, refuses to break. Each Chinese graduate who walks across that stage carries home a piece of the US. Each US classmate who waves goodbye carries home a piece of China. These exchanges do not eliminate disagreements between the two governments, but they form the human ballast that keeps disagreements from hardening into hostility.

President Trump was right to highlight this issue in Beijing. The challenge now, on both sides of the Pacific, is to ensure that words lead to open doors, fair visas, and the unassuming work of welcoming young people who have come a very long way to learn.

When my daughter's name was called at the Krannert Center, I thought of all the families around me. The future was sitting in those seats. We owe it to them — and to ourselves — to keep the doors open.

The author is the founder and CEO of the Global CSR Foundation.

The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

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