China has lodged a protest over the US declaration that it will “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students studying at US universities.

China’s ministry of foreign affairs told reporters on Thursday that it had formally objected to Washington over Wednesday’s announcement by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state.

A spokesperson for the Chinese government, Mao Ning, accused the Trump administration of using national security and ideology as a pretext for the “unreasonable” decision, which “seriously damaged the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese students and disrupted the normal cultural exchanges between the two countries”.