The Trump administration has placed restrictions on the ability of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members and their families to travel to the United States.
The State Department has revised its policy to reduce the maximum duration of stay for CCP members and their immediate families who hold B1/B2 visitor visas—from 10 years to one month, a department official said in a Dec. 3 statement.
Currently, there are around 92 million Party members in China.
The official said the measure was made in line with the administration’s aim to “protect our nation from the CCP’s malign influence.”
“The CCP and its members actively work in the U.S. to influence Americans through propaganda, economic coercion, and other nefarious activities,” the official said, adding that the regime also sends agents to “unabashedly monitor, threaten, and report on Chinese nationals and Chinese-American groups” engaging in activities protected under the First Amendment.
The rule change, first reported by The New York Times, marks the latest in a series of measures by the Trump administration to push back against the CCP’s threats. It earlier canceled visas for Chinese graduate students with ties to the Chinese military, resulting in more than 1,000 visas being revoked. The State Department has also designated a spate of organizations linked to Beijing as foreign diplomatic missions, a distinction that restricts their operations in the United States. They have included Chinese state-run media outlets, the Confucius Institute U.S. Center, and a CCP front group.
