US tightens screws on China on 3 fronts - visas, genomics firms and campus centres

Washington: The Trump administration has moved against China on three fronts in a week, ending visa-free travel for Chinese visitors to a US Pacific territory, blacklisting China's leading genomics firms over forced labour and designating Chinese-funded campus centres a national security threat.

The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday added three related Chinese companies, BGI Genomics, MGI Tech and Shenzhen BGI Technology, also known as BGI Group, to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Entity List.

Effective October 29, US Customs and Border Protection will apply "a rebuttable presumption that goods produced by these three entities are prohibited from entering the United States", DHS said.

The department said the US government "has reasonable cause to believe, based on specific and articulable information, that BGI Genomics conducts genetic testing in the XUAR alongside the government of the XUAR and as a part of its government initiatives". It said such testing "is utilised to facilitate the recruitment, transport, transfer, harbouring or receiving of forced labour".

Separately, a DHS notice published in the Federal Register on October 27 suspends the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Economic Vitality and Security Travel Authorization Program, which allowed prescreened Chinese nationals to visit the islands without a visa. The suspension takes effect at 2 p.m. EDT on October 30 and covers existing authorisations.

"DHS judges that PRC nationals are almost certainly exploiting EVS-TAP," the notice said, citing risks of espionage near military facilities on Tinian and Guam, smuggling to Guam and birth tourism. More than 3,000 Chinese nationals used the programme in fiscal year 2025.

Earlier, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon had designated Confucius Institutes, Chinese-funded cultural centres at universities, as a threat to US national security.

"It turns out that 80 new propaganda cells across 30 universities had popped up using different names and different charters, but with the same mission: to steal intellectual property and to infiltrate the minds of American students," Hegseth said in a video.

He said the department had over the past two months "systematically dismantled every single one of these organisations". The Pentagon said on October 19 that research security audits at 30 universities had resulted in more than 80 "termination-related actions", according to VOA.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Beijing opposed "smears and stigmatisation targeting Confucius Institutes", VOA reported.

The actions come as Trump said a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on nuclear weapons had been scheduled.

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