Australian writer on his deportation from the US
Alistair Kitchen is a writer from Australia who was blocked from entering the US in June 2025.
In this Unmute, Kitchen describes how he endured hours of interrogation and had his phone confiscated and forensically downloaded by Customs agents before he was deported back to Australia. He believes it was over his writing on the pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University and his views on Israel-Palestine.
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Qatar Tribune
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US, China all set to resume tariff talks in effort to keep sharply higher tariffs at bay
Agencies Stockholm Senior US and Chinese negotiators meet in Stockholm on Monday to tackle longstanding economic disputes at the centre of the countries' trade war, aiming to extend a truce keeping sharply higher tariffs at bay. China is facing an August 12 deadline to reach a durable tariff agreement with President Donald Trump's administration, after Beijing and Washington reached a preliminary deal in June to end weeks of escalating tit-for-tat tariffs. Without an agreement, global supply chains could face renewed turmoil from duties exceeding 100 percent. The Stockholm talks, led by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, take place a day after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen meets Trump at his golf course in Scotland to try to clinch a deal that would likely see a 15 percent baseline tariff on most EU goods. Trade analysts on both sides of the Pacific say the discussions in the Swedish capital are unlikely to produce any breakthroughs but could prevent further escalation and help create conditions for Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to meet later this year. Previous US-China trade talks in Geneva and London in May and June focused on bringing US and Chinese retaliatory tariffs down from triple-digit levels and restoring the flow of rare earth minerals halted by China and Nvidia H20 AI chips and other goods halted by the United States. So far, the talks have not delved into broader economic issues. They include US complaints that China's state-led, export-driven model is flooding world markets with cheap goods, and Beijing's complaints that US national security export controls on tech goods seek to stunt Chinese growth. 'Stockholm will be the first meaningful round of US-China trade talks,' said Bo Zhengyuan, Shanghai-based partner at China consultancy firm Plenum. Trump has been successful in pressuring some other trading partners, including Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, into deals accepting higher US tariffs of 15 percent to 20 percent. He said there was a 50-50 chance that the US and the 27-member European Union could also reach a framework trade pact, adding that Brussels wanted to 'make a deal very badly'. Two of Trump's top trade officials, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, will attend the Scotland talks and then travel to Stockholm. Analysts say the US-China negotiations are far more complex and will require more time. China's grip on the global market for rare earth minerals and magnets, used in everything from military hardware to car windshield wiper motors, has proved to be an effective leverage point on US industries. In the background of the talks is speculation about a possible meeting between Trump and Xi in late October. Trump has said he will decide soon whether to visit China in a landmark trip to address trade and security tensions. A new flare-up of tariffs and export controls would likely derail any plans for a meeting with Xi. 'The Stockholm meeting is an opportunity to start laying the groundwork for a Trump visit to China,' said Wendy Cutler, vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Bessent has already said he wants to work out an extension of the August 12 deadline to prevent tariffs snapping back to 145 percent on the US side and 125 percent on the Chinese side. Still, China will likely request a reduction of multi-layered US tariffs totaling 55 percent on most goods and further easing of US high-tech export controls, analysts said. Beijing has argued that such purchases would help reduce the US trade deficit with China, which reached $295.5 billion in 2024. China is currently facing a 20 percent tariff related to US fentanyl crisis, a 10 percent reciprocal tariff, and 25 percent duties on most industrial goods imposed during Trump's first term. Bessent has also said he would discuss with He the need for China to rebalance its economy away from exports toward domestic consumer demand. The shift would require China to put an end to a protracted property crisis and boost social safety nets to encourage household spending. Michael Froman, a former US trade representative during Barack Obama's administration, said such a shift has been a goal of US policymakers for two decades. 'Can we effectively use tariffs to get China to fundamentally change their economic strategy? That remains to be seen,' said Froman, now president of the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank.
Al Jazeera
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Has the US cancelled free speech?
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US universities still a valuable investment for Chinese families
Agencies Jason Lin of Xiamen surprised his mother this year by applying to 10 undergraduate schools in the United States and receiving a US$15,000 annual scholarship from Brandeis University near Boston. There, he intends to earn a master's degree in economics over the next five years. But to his mother, it's like he's venturing into the wild, compounding the anxiety parents often feel when their adult children leave the nest. She's afraid of 'instability' in the US. And Lin, 19, has concerns that even a traffic ticket could get him deported. But he weighed the pros and cons, laid it all on the table for his mother, and decided on Brandeis in time for the coming fall semester. Despite a sharp increase in US-China tensions this year, Chinese students such as Lin are still pursuing American higher education much as they have in the past, but they are being more selective than before, according to applicants and university officials. 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The University of New Mexico, a public school specialising in STEM and health-related disciplines, has 89 Chinese students on campus and expects 20 more this autumn, putting the total higher than at the same time last year or in 2023, according to campus communications director Steven Carr. The university welcomed 21 new Chinese students last autumn, and 16 at the start of the 2023 academic nationals appreciate that the school has affordable tuition; offers scholarships for undergraduates and graduate students; and features hands-on learning opportunities in graduate programmes, Carr said. He said the campus can sometimes offer 'resources tailored to international students'. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May that the United States would start 'aggressively' revoking visas issued to Chinese students and would 'enhance scrutiny' of new applications. The administration of US President Donald Trump was on track after its first 100 days to deport about half a million people this year, according to the Migration Policy Institute think tank. Singapore has been tipped to attract more Chinese students due to perceived instability in the US. In June, Trump announced that the US would indeed allow Chinese students into American universities, as part of a wider deal with China. However, many students and their parents were already on high alert over reports of students being denied visas, being detained at immigration checkpoints, or being shown hostility in America amid bilateral spats over trade and competing geopolitical ambitions. A pivotal moment came in May, when the Department of Homeland Security took steps to restrict the entry of new international students and considered revoking existing visas for current Harvard students, citing national security. But a federal judge blocked the government's move to bar foreign students and scholars from entering the US to study or work at Harvard, and the Ivy League school made that clear on its website. The University of California, San Francisco, admitted eight students from abroad for the upcoming academic year to its nationally ranked pharmacy graduate school, and five were Chinese nationals. One more was admitted from China but could not get a US visa. Last year, just four out of the School of Pharmacy's 127 students were from other countries. Applications from China, a perennial chief source of applicants, have shown no sign of slowing, said the school's admissions director, Joel Gonzalez. 'For the most part … when you look at the number of international students, probably the majority of them are going to be from China,' Gonzales said at his office in a tower of classrooms and university-run medical wards up the hill from San Francisco's Golden Gate Park and a city bus ride from Chinatown. Reasons for their applications 'could be the diversity of San Francisco versus somewhere in the [US] Midwest that might not be as inviting to a student in China', he said. 'And we're the top-ranked programme in California, so I can't help but think that those variables come into play.'It was another well-ranked programme, Human Computer Interaction, that drew Zhou Yubo to the University of Michigan for his graduate studies in August. Now he is just waiting to see whether he gets the necessary student visa, having already waited more than six weeks. The 22-year-old, with a tech-related undergraduate degree and two previous stays in the US, said he believed the campus in Ann Arbor would be 'a good place to study hard', due to what he sees as a lack of entertainment options compared with other university towns. Personal careers are now more important to US-bound Chinese students than visa issues or geopolitical pressures, said Perry Link, a comparative literature-Chinese professor at the University of California, Riverside. 'The graduate students, who are mostly in STEM fields, are interested in joining the international quest to advance scientific learning in universities or companies in the US,' Link said. 'Undergraduates are usually full-tuition-paying students from wealthy or fairly wealthy backgrounds in China,' he said. 'A lot of them study business or accounting and are looking for careers in the US or in family-affiliated firms back in China. They like to position themselves to do well in both systems – Chinese and American.' Another Ivy League school, Cornell University, has similarly found little change this year from last, despite some Chinese students having a little trouble getting visas, said Wendy Wolford, vice-provost for international affairs. Cornell lets students without visas start their studies at one of Cornell's three 'top' partner schools in other countries, she said. The California State University campus in the inland college town of Chico counts Chinese nationals as 3.5 per cent of the international student body, public relations director Andrew Staples said. The relatively small, crime-free city of 101,000 people is a selling point, he added. Students from second- and third-tier Chinese cities may go for the state school's relatively low tuition and living costs, compared with schools in bigger American urban areas, Staples said. 'Chico's setting as a university town offers an accessible and immersive American college experience that appeals to students and families alike,' he said.
