The Lasting Legacy of the Biden Administration’s Open Border Policies China’s Influence has Grown From Our Universities, Technology Companies and the Institutions That Shape American Life.
For decades, Americans thought about the threat posed by China primarily in conventional terms: aircraft carriers in the Pacific, Taiwan, trade deficits, stolen technology, cyberattacks and an increasingly powerful People’s Liberation Army.
But great-power competition in the 21st century doesn’t always arrive wearing a uniform.
Sometimes it arrives through economics. Sometimes through technology. Sometimes through universities, research partnerships, media, lobbying, diplomacy and organizations capable of influencing the people who influence American policy.
And during the Biden administration, another unusual development emerged: a dramatic increase in Chinese nationals appearing at America’s southern border.
Taken individually, these issues are very different. They shouldn’t be casually lumped together, and Chinese immigrants, students and Chinese Americans certainly shouldn’t be presumed to be agents of Beijing.
But taken collectively, they raise an important question:
Is America sufficiently protecting itself against the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to exploit the openness that makes American society so successful?
That question deserves more attention than it receives.
The Border Surge Nobody Expected
Chinese nationals historically represented a tiny fraction of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Then something changed.
During the Biden years, encounters with Chinese nationals along the Southwest border increased dramatically. The phenomenon became sufficiently large that Chinese migrants traveling through Latin America toward the United States became an international news story.
That doesn’t mean these people were soldiers.
It doesn’t mean they were spies.
And despite widely circulated claims on social media, publicly available government statistics do not establish that 175,000 Chinese “military-aged men” illegally crossed America’s southern border.
That’s an important correction because the real numbers are remarkable enough without exaggerating them.
The legitimate national-security question isn’t whether every Chinese migrant represents a threat. Obviously they don’t.
The question is why such a dramatic migration pattern developed, whether the United States adequately identified and vetted those entering the country, and whether America’s overwhelmed immigration system was capable of detecting the small number of individuals who could represent legitimate security concerns.
China is one of America’s principal geopolitical competitors. Knowing who enters the country isn’t xenophobia.
It’s border security.
The Bigger Issue Is Beijing, Not Chinese People
There’s another distinction America needs to get right.
The Chinese Communist Party is not the Chinese people.
Millions of Chinese citizens have sought opportunities outside China precisely because they want greater economic, political or personal freedom. Chinese immigrants have made enormous contributions to American science, business, medicine, technology and culture.
At the same time, extensive research has documented efforts by the Chinese party-state to influence institutions outside China’s borders.
A major Hoover Institution study examining Chinese influence in the United States documented activities involving universities, think tanks, media, corporations, government institutions and portions of the Chinese diaspora.
Its conclusion wasn’t that Chinese people should be treated suspiciously.
Quite the opposite.
The researchers explicitly warned against generalized suspicion while arguing for what they called “constructive vigilance.”
That’s exactly the balance America needs.
The Academic Front
American universities represent something China desperately wants: extraordinary concentrations of scientific knowledge, technological innovation and human talent.
That’s precisely why academia deserves scrutiny.
Universities have also produced enormously beneficial scientific and cultural exchanges between Americans and Chinese researchers. But the openness that makes American universities exceptional can also create vulnerabilities.
Hoover researchers documented concerns involving Chinese government pressure on American universities, intellectual-property risks, Chinese Students and Scholars Associations and efforts to influence discussions involving politically sensitive subjects.
The issue becomes considerably more serious when research involves technologies with military or strategic applications.
Artificial intelligence. Quantum computing. Aerospace. Advanced materials. Semiconductors. Biotechnology. Robotics.
These aren’t merely academic disciplines anymore.
They’re components of national power.
America therefore needs to distinguish between legitimate international academic collaboration—which should remain an important part of higher education—and relationships that create undisclosed conflicts, intellectual-property vulnerabilities or pathways for sensitive technology transfer.
That’s not anti-Chinese.
It’s common sense.
America’s Research Labs Are a Prize
The same problem extends beyond universities.
America’s enormous research infrastructure is one of its greatest strategic advantages. Federal laboratories, universities, defense contractors and private technology companies generate discoveries worth billions of dollars and sometimes capable of changing the military balance between nations.
China understands their value.
American counterintelligence officials have spent years warning about Chinese efforts to acquire valuable technology and intellectual property through cyber operations, corporate espionage, recruitment programs and relationships with researchers.
That doesn’t make every Chinese scientist suspicious.
It means access to genuinely sensitive research should involve genuinely serious vetting.
America wouldn’t hand an adversary the blueprints to its newest fighter aircraft.
We shouldn’t be careless with the technologies that will build the next generation of them either.
The Think-Tank Battlefield
Then there are the institutions most Americans rarely think about.
Think tanks don’t command armies or manufacture microchips.
They manufacture ideas.
Their researchers testify before Congress, advise presidential administrations, appear throughout the media and produce policy recommendations that can eventually become American law.
That makes influence over them potentially valuable.
Hoover researchers reported that American think-tank personnel had experienced attempts by Chinese diplomats and intermediaries to influence their activities. Researchers also highlighted an important asymmetry: American institutions operate within an extraordinarily open society while China places much greater restrictions on foreign organizations investigating politically sensitive subjects inside China.
That’s a structural vulnerability democracies constantly face.
Our openness is one of our greatest strengths.
It can also be exploited by governments that don’t reciprocate it.
The Information Battlefield
Modern geopolitical competition isn’t confined to territory.
It’s also a competition over perception.
What does the world think about Taiwan?
What does it believe about China’s human-rights record?
How should Americans perceive Beijing’s ambitions?
Which stories receive attention—and which quietly disappear?
Chinese state-controlled media organizations have invested heavily in international communications, while researchers have documented Beijing’s attempts to shape narratives abroad.
Hoover’s examination of Chinese influence also raised concerns about pressure on Chinese-language media operating in the United States.
Again, the solution isn’t censorship.
It’s transparency.
Americans should know when the information they’re consuming originates with, is funded by, or is influenced by a foreign government.
Free speech works best when people know who is doing the speaking.
Follow the Money
China’s enormous economic power provides another source of leverage.
Access to the Chinese market can be extraordinarily valuable to American corporations. That gives Beijing something every negotiator understands:
Leverage.
Companies that depend heavily upon Chinese manufacturing, consumers or investment can face powerful incentives to avoid angering Beijing.
Hollywood has faced controversies over modifying movies for Chinese audiences. Corporations have found themselves navigating political disputes involving Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong and other subjects Beijing considers sensitive.
None of this requires secret agents lurking in corporate boardrooms.
Economic pressure can accomplish plenty on its own.
When access to one of the world’s largest markets depends upon remaining on the good side of an authoritarian government, executives don’t need someone to tell them where the boundaries are.
Eventually, they learn.
Technology May Be the Real Battlefield
The most consequential competition between America and China may ultimately have little to do with immigration.
It may be technological.
Artificial intelligence, advanced semiconductor manufacturing, quantum computing, biotechnology, autonomous weapons, telecommunications, robotics and space technology will shape economic and military power for decades.
China knows this.
So does Washington.
The country that dominates these technologies won’t merely produce better smartphones. It could control critical supply chains, establish global technological standards, dominate emerging industries and possess enormous military advantages.
That makes intellectual property and advanced research national-security assets.
America spent generations building the world’s greatest innovation ecosystem.
Protecting it isn’t protectionism.
It’s strategy.
Where America Has Been Naive
For decades, much of Washington operated under a relatively optimistic assumption: increased economic integration with China would gradually encourage political liberalization.
China certainly became richer.
It became technologically sophisticated.
It became deeply integrated into the global economy.
But the Chinese Communist Party didn’t disappear.
Instead, Beijing built the world’s second-largest economy while maintaining an authoritarian political system and developing increasingly sophisticated military, technological and intelligence capabilities.
America helped create an enormously successful global economic system.
China learned how to operate brilliantly within it.
The uncomfortable question is whether Beijing also learned how to exploit some of its weaknesses better than Washington learned how to defend them.
Vigilance Without Paranoia
This is where the conversation can easily go off the rails.
There are more than a billion Chinese people in the world. They aren’t collectively responsible for the policies of the Chinese Communist Party.
Chinese Americans are Americans.
Chinese students aren’t automatically intelligence operatives.
Chinese scientists aren’t automatically stealing technology.
Chinese migrants aren’t automatically soldiers.
Treating them that way would be both morally wrong and strategically stupid.
In fact, one of the most important warnings in the Hoover research is that measures intended to counter harmful Chinese government influence must not become an excuse to demonize Chinese Americans or visitors to the United States.
America’s objective shouldn’t be paranoia.
It should be discernment.
There is an enormous difference.
What America Should Actually Do
The response doesn’t require internment camps, racial profiling or another Red Scare.
It requires competent government.
Secure the border and establish the identity of people entering the country.
Improve counterintelligence surrounding genuinely sensitive technologies.
Require meaningful disclosure of foreign government funding and relationships in universities, think tanks and research institutions.
Protect intellectual property aggressively.
Increase scrutiny of foreign participation in strategically important infrastructure and technology.
Demand transparency when foreign governments fund media, lobbying or influence operations.
Strengthen research-security standards without destroying legitimate scientific collaboration.
And perhaps most importantly, insist on reciprocity.
If American researchers, journalists and institutions cannot operate freely inside China, Washington should at least ask why Chinese state-linked institutions should enjoy virtually unrestricted access to America’s open system.
The Threat Isn’t Immigration. It’s Exploitation.
The original temptation is to look at Chinese nationals crossing America’s southern border and conclude that they are the threat.
That’s too simplistic.
The larger issue is whether the United States has built institutions strong enough to remain open without becoming vulnerable.
America’s openness attracts entrepreneurs, scientists, immigrants, students and dissidents from around the world.
That’s an enormous strategic advantage.
We shouldn’t destroy it.
But openness without safeguards becomes vulnerability.
The real challenge posed by Beijing isn’t some Hollywood-style invasion involving hundreds of thousands of secret soldiers walking across the Rio Grande.
It’s subtler than that—and potentially far more consequential.
It’s the possibility that an authoritarian competitor can use the openness of American markets, universities, technology, media and political institutions to advance its strategic interests while denying Americans comparable access inside its own society.
No tanks are required.
No beaches have to be stormed.
No declaration of war needs to be issued.
The competition is already happening—in laboratories, semiconductor plants, universities, corporate offices, cyberspace, diplomatic circles and the institutions where tomorrow’s American policies are being developed.
The answer isn’t fear of Chinese people.
It’s a clear-eyed understanding of the Chinese Communist Party, its strategic ambitions and the vulnerabilities within our own system.
America doesn’t need another Red Scare.
It needs something considerably more useful:
Open eyes. Secure borders. Protected technology. Transparent institutions. And the confidence to defend an open society without surrendering the very freedoms that make it worth defending.
