The United States government has revoked visas of more than 1,000 Chinese students and researchers under an order issued by President Donald Trump accusing some of them of espionage and working for the Chinese communist party, the State Department said Wednesday September 9.

As tensions between Beijing and Washington rose on multiple fronts, Trump, in a May 29 proclamation, declared that some Chinese nationals officially in the United States for study have stolen intellectual property and helped modernize China’s military.

The State Department, on Wednesday September 9 for the first time, has now released first figures on the effects of Trump’s order, stating that more than 1,000 visas have been revoked since June 1 when implementation began.

“The high-risk graduate students and research scholars made ineligible under this proclamation represent a small subset of the total number of Chinese students and scholars coming to the United States,” a State Department spokeswoman said.

“We continue to welcome legitimate students and scholars from China who do not further the Chinese Communist Party’s goals of military dominance,” she said.

The State Department also accused some of the students and researchers of stealing research information from American scientists working to develop a covid-19 vaccine.

Nearly 370,000 students from China were enrolled at US Universities in 2018-19, the most of any country, pouring in income to the educational sector now laden with Coronavirus pandemic economic effects.