To Topple Kim Jong Un, Expel Chinese Children From U.S. Universities

This article first appeared on the American Enterprise Institute site.

The New York Times reports that "President Trump, frustrated by China's unwillingness to lean on North Korea, has told the Chinese leader that the United States is prepared to act on its own in pressuring the nuclear-armed government in Pyongyang."

Trump, the Times reports, wants to take measures against China that "would spur Mr. Xi to reconsider his reluctance to press the North."

Over at the Wall Street Journal, my old boss Bill McGurn has a great idea on how Trump can do just that :

If the first Duke of Wellington were alive today, he might advise that the battle for North Korea will be won or lost on Harvard Yard. Add Stanford, Yale, Dartmouth, Chicago and other top-tier private American universities so popular with China's "red nobility" i.e., the children and grandchildren of Communist Chinese elites.

For if the Trump administration hopes to enlist an unwilling Beijing to check North Korea's nuclear ambitions, visas for the children of China's ruling class to attend these universities offer an excellent pressure point….

The advantage of starting with student visas is twofold: The unintended harm done would be more limited than any military strike, and visas are likely a more effective lever than sanctions.

Today 328,547 Chinese students attend American universities, according to the Institute for International Education. The Chinese represent the largest group of foreign students in America….

The Chinese taste for prestigious American universities goes right to the top. Although President Xi Jinping rails against the corruption of Western values, his daughter went to Harvard, which Mr. Xi managed to swing on an official annual salary of roughly $20,000.

A few years back, the Washington Post noted that of the nine members of the standing committee of China's Politburo, at least five had children or grandchildren studying in the US. There are many, many more.

This is a brilliant idea, and there is legal precedent for it. In 1996, Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act which tightened economic sanctions on Cuba, including measures to bar the senior executives of European and Canadian businesses that trafficked in stolen American property on the island and their immediate families from entering the United States.

The bill declared these individuals "persona non grata" which meant no family vacations in Disneyland, no shopping trips on 5th Avenue and Rodeo Drive for their wives, and no American colleges and universities for their children.

Of all the sanctions included in the Helms-Burton law — including allowing Americans to sue the foreign investors for treble damages in US courts — none stung like the visa restrictions.

Just the threat of preventing family members from entering the US deterred investment, for one simple reason: The one thing CEOs fear more than angry shareholders are angry wives and children. The Helms-Burton law turned the wives and children of these executives into lobbyists for change in investment policy.

Visa restrictions relating to North Korea could have a similar effect Chinese leaders. Congress should pass legislation authorizing the president to declare any foreign person and their immediately family members deemed to be complicit in enabling trade with North Korea to be persona non-grata in the US.

Mr. Xi and his comrades may be reluctant to take serious action against Pyongyang. But Madame Xi and her comrades may have other ideas.

Marc Thiessen is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). A member of the White House senior staff under President George W. Bush, he served as chief speechwriter to the president and to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Before joining the Bush administration, he spent more than six years as spokesman and senior policy adviser to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-NC).