China plans to order most foreign students to leave Beijing before the Olympic Games in August, strictly regulate the issuing of business and tourist visas, and deport refugees, sources said yesterday.
“Even if you have to continue your studies in September, you need to leave Beijing in July and August,” a spokeswoman for Beijing University said.
The university is one of China’s most prestigious colleges and enrolls hundreds of foreign students annually on Chinese-language and other courses.
The spokeswoman from Beijing University’s international cooperation department said the two-month gap applies to all universities in Beijing and was ordered by “higher authorities” because of the Olympics.
She said all short-term summer courses for foreigners had been canceled this year.
One Western education official estimated that at least 10,000 students could be affected by the order if it applied to the whole country, though some universities outside Beijing said they were unaware of the rule.
The head of the German academic exchange, the DAAD, said a ban on foreign students during the Olympics was not mentioned in recent meetings with officials.
An administrator of dormitories for foreigners at Tongji University in Shanghai said her department had received no notice banning students during the Olympics.
But a woman who assists foreign students in China said at least two universities outside Beijing, Anhui Normal University and Heilongjiang University, had stopped recruiting foreign students for courses running beyond July.
She said she believed any students with visas until the end of this year would be allowed to stay in Beijing, but she added that most student visas would expire in June before the universities’ normal summer vacation.
A foreign ministry official said he was unaware of any ban on students but the normal education of foreign students “will be guaranteed.”
The official China Daily said about 190,000 foreign students from 188 nations attended courses in China last year.
Asked for comment last night, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman Liu Teh-hsun (劉德勳) said he was unaware of the developments, but that the council would monitor the situation.
China has already severely restricted the issuing of short-term and multi-entry business visas, prompting complaints from business groups and diplomats.
Some Beijing-based businesses said they may be unable to fill vacancies until after the Olympics because of the new restrictions.
“You can be sure that all countries affected will raise the issue with the Chinese side very intensively,” one informed source said of the restrictions on business visas.
“It clearly has to do with the Olympics,” the source said.
China appears to have acted partly in response to recent reports that police uncovered at least two terrorist plots targeting the Olympics, the source said, adding that other nations had taken similar security measures in the past.
China’s Foreign Ministry yesterday defended the move and said visas were issued “according to law.”
“I believe it will have no influence on normal business activities in China,” ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu (姜瑜) said.
But Joerg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, yesterday criticized China for limiting business visas issued in Hong Kong.
Wuttke called the restrictions “truly annoying” and charged that the new visa rules were unclear and had never been published.
The new measures, which an informed source said were temporary, require non-permanent Hong Kong residents to apply for visas in their home countries.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) also said it was concerned about the deportation of vulnerable refugees from China before the Olympics.
In a statement posted on its Web site, UNHCR highlighted the case of a 17-year-old unaccompanied refugee who was returned to his country of origin after being taken from his home in Beijing on April 3.
UNHCR spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis said that some of the deportations among the 180 refugees recorded by UNHCR in China “may well constitute a violation” of the 1951 Refugee Convention.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
Taiwan is still in the process of assessing the possibility of recruiting workers from Eswatini, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that its goal is to help Eswatini upgrade its vocational training centers. If there are plans to recruit workers from Eswatini, safeguarding national security, protecting public health and ensuring the employment rights of Taiwanese would be prerequisites, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Yen Chia-liang (顏嘉良) told a news conference. Key considerations would also include filling labor shortages in specific industries, and fostering bilateral professional and technical exchanges, he said. Yen was asked about the progress of labor
A US uncrewed surface vessel (USV) encountered multiple Chinese warships during an autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait, US defense company Seasats said in a statement on Wednesday. Seasats announced that a Lightfish USV had completed the first autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait. Over five days, the USV traversed the entire length of the Strait while constantly monitoring surface vessel traffic, the company said. The Lightfish encountered multiple Chinese warships, one of which was a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 056 corvette, it said. The Chinese vessels were operating “well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone without transmitting their identity via the
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
RSS