CT used pseudonyms for all Chinese sources in this article except Jessie Yu, as they fear arrest for their involvement in unregistered house churches and Christian schools.
Zhu Desheng and Wang Pei, who live in a third-tier city in southern China, sacrificed a lot to ensure their son, Peter, received a Christian education.
They decided not to place him into the school system, where he would be exposed to atheistic and Marxist propaganda. Instead, they homeschooled Peter using a mix of curricula from Chinese public schools and homeschool material from the American Christian curriculum publisher Abeka. Neighbors reported Peter for not going to school, so he started staying inside his family’s apartment during the day. Without peers, he felt isolated and lonely.
So the family decided to enroll Peter at an international Christian boarding school in the Philippines. Peter quickly adapted, joining the school’s American football team and running track and field. As he reached his senior year last fall, he applied for several Christian universities in the US, and in April he got accepted to Biola University in California.
Yet in June, as Peter prepared to apply for a student visa for the fall, his father learned that US consulates had suspended visa interviews for Chinese students and visiting scholars.
Suddenly, Peter’s education plan was in upheaval. Scrambling, they began researching colleges in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Germany as backup options.
“We were in a tough spot, not knowing how God would lead our child,” Zhu reflected.
On June 18, the US State Department resumed visa interviews but introduced expanded social media screenings. Peter tried to make a visa appointment online, yet even when he used a VPN (virtual private network) to jump China’s Great Firewall, the page wouldn’t load. So he turned to the e-commerce site Taobao, where he paid a visa agency 800 yuan ($110 USD) for an appointment at the US Consulate in Guangzhou. After a 15-minute interview with a visa officer on July 2, he received his F-1 visa and is now starting his freshman year at Biola.
The uncertainty surrounding Chinese student visas in the US has affected Christian families who have pulled their children out of the national school system to homeschool or to put them in church-run, unregistered Christian schools. In China, neither of these options is legal, and the government often cracks down on these schools or pushes homeschooling parents to send their kids back to school.
Because most Christian curricula is published in the US, students learn in English and are on track to attend college in the West. Yet geopolitics and China’s economic downturn is forcing families to switch gears and find new solutions, such as sending their kids to schools in Southeast or East Asia.
“These countries or regions are nearby, safe, and relatively inexpensive,” Xiao Fang, a homeschooling mom of three, told CT. “The increasingly tense US-China relations have indeed affected many people’s choices.”
Students all over China were caught off-guard by the Trump administration’s May decision to revoke the visas of Chinese students it believes have “connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”
Then the one-month suspension of visa applications caused chaos: Booking a visa interview became nearly impossible without hiring an agent as Peter did. Jessie Yu, an education consultant at an international school in Shanghai, said some students had to travel 750 miles to Beijing or 1,000 miles to Shenyang, where appointments are more accessible.
Yu’s students also noted that they needed to give the US government their social media handles and set their profiles to public. The extra background checks sometimes extended their wait times by up to a month.
“Parents [were] anxious, not knowing when to begin preparations for the next steps—physical exams, purchasing flight tickets—all dependent on having a valid student visa,” Yu said.
Some Christians seeking to study in US seminaries are also having trouble getting their visas. Christina Chen of Shanghai said she submitted her application for a student visa to study at a Reformed seminary before the policy changes and scheduled her visa interview for early May. After a detailed 20-minute interview with the visa officer, she received a notice that she had gone through the interview process, but she never heard back about her visa. Among her peers applying to seminaries, she said half were unable to get visas.
According to Jonathan Sutton, director of International Student Services at Ohio’s Cedarville University, the top reason the US denies F-1 visas to students is because the consular officials suspect they do not “intend to depart the US upon completion of their academic programs.” He noted that other reasons include errors on the application, more than one application submission at a time, or suspicion of fraud.
For the new school year, Cedarville has about 165 F-1 students, 20 percent of whom are from China. None of the university’s Chinese students have had their visas denied in the past two years.
Even before Trump returned to office, Chinese students had begun looking elsewhere for higher education, according to parents CT spoke to. China’s economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic made the US’s high tuition fees unaffordable. Families started turning to more affordable options in Asia—including Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong.
The number of Chinese students studying in the US dropped to 277,400 in 2023 from 372,500 in 2019, the year before the pandemic. In contrast, Chinese students in Japan increased by 6.9 percent in 2024 as compared to 2023, totaling 123,485 students last year. Studying in Japan is cheaper than in the US, and the Japanese government has started initiatives to attract new grads to work in the country.
The decoupling of Chinese students and US colleges is also closing the door for a fruitful ministry. A survey revealed that Protestant Christians had evangelized 92 percent of Chinese students and scholars surveyed at Purdue University, and the number of Chinese students identifying as Protestants quadrupled after they came to study in the US.
For instance, Chen noted that while she was studying for a master’s degree in business in Texas more than a decade ago, Christians from local churches—many of them retired—reached out to her and other international students. Through Bible studies and friendships with church members, Chen realized that Christianity was not mere superstition but the truth, and she accepted Christ. As she started working as a financial analyst, she took Hebrew and exegesis courses at a nearby seminary, solidifying her desire to pursue a degree in theology. After six years studying and working in the US, she moved back to China to serve in the local church.
Yet not all Chinese Christians believe the US should be the end goal for students. Blaze Mi, the former academic director at the only Christian liberal arts college in China, believes that when Christian schools and families set the goal of studying abroad too early, children often lose their connection to local culture and struggle socially. Instead, he encourages students to engage with their communities and serve in local ministries, as well as getting out to explore nature.
A proponent of classical Christian education, Mi helped establish an experimental liberal arts program focused on embodied learning at an unregistered classical Christian school. Students enter the four-year program at 16 or 17, and although they don’t receive a diploma for completing it, Mi believes they receive the equivalent of an undergraduate education. Currently, 13 students are in this program, and most hope to work in the church or teach at church schools in the future.
Owen Huang, dean of an unregistered church school in Shanghai, emphasized that US colleges remain the top choices for his students, including the 30 seniors who will graduate next year. To help them get accepted, Huang’s school added more math and science courses, as he’s found that obtaining student visas for science and engineering colleges in the US is generally easier than getting visas for liberal arts colleges and seminaries. Huang also advises his students to be mindful of their social media presence, steering clear of political commentary.
Yet his primary concern is for students already studying in the US. Many students living alone in a foreign country are lonely and turn social media or gaming for solace. To support them, Huang started a weekly online Bible study for alumni and offers counseling as needed. He visits his graduates in the US to encourage and to pray for them.
To ensure less affluent families can send their kids to their dream colleges, Huang is planning fundraising efforts for university tuition. “I don’t want to waste any child’s talent,” he said.
As Chen continues to wait for her student visa, she is taking online courses at the US seminary that accepted her. She reflected on Psalm 147:5, which says, “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.”
“I believe that God’s plans showcase his wisdom and power, even if, with my limited understanding, I sometimes struggle to grasp them,” she said.
