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The U.S. Department of Justice is ending a Trump-era investigation of national-security threats from China following several failed prosecutions of American university researchers for their ties to China.
Matthew Olsen, assistant attorney general for national security, announced the end of the China Initiative in a speech Wednesday afternoon at George Mason University, saying that it “fueled a narrative of intolerance and bias.”
“While I remain focused on the evolving, significant threat that the government of China poses,” Olsen said, “I have concluded that this initiative is not the right approach.” Instead, he said the U.S. government must take a “broader approach” to protect know-how and intellectual property from foreign governments, including China, Iran, and Russia, that seek to poach American innovation.
In his remarks, Olsen acknowledged that the government probe of academic and espionage had taken a particular toll on American higher education and on scientists of Chinese and Asian descent. “We have heard that these prosecutions — and the public narrative they create — can lead to a chilling atmosphere for scientists and scholars that damages the scientific enterprise in this country,” he said.
“Safeguarding the integrity and transparency of research institutions is a matter of national security. But so is ensuring that we continue to attract the best and the brightest researchers and scholars to our country from all around the world — and that we all continue to honor our tradition of academic openness and collaboration.”
Higher-education, civil-rights, and Asian American groups had pushed for a reconsideration of the China Initiative, and Olsen had begun a review when he took office in the fall.
The Trump administration started the China Initiative in November 2018, an effort to root out espionage by the Chinese government.
From the outset, public officials singled out American universities as particularly vulnerable to Chinese influence. “What more bad decisions will schools make because they are hooked on Chinese Communist Party cash?” said Michael Pompeo, then-secretary of state, in a December 2020 speech at Georgia Tech. “What professors will they be able to co-opt or to silence? What theft and espionage will [universities] simply overlook?”
But the actual indictments brought against American researchers and visiting scholars were unrelated to spying. Instead, the prosecutions focused on academics’ failure to disclose Chinese ties to federal grant-making agencies or universities, making false statements to government authorities, and tax and visa fraud.
In many cases, the charges did not stick. In recent months, prosecutions have been dismissed against a half-dozen researchers, most notably against Gang Chen, a mechanical-engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whom prosecutors alleged had taken millions of dollars from a Chinese university. But L. Rafael Reif, MIT’s president, had clarified that the funds had gone to the university as part of an institutional project with a Chinese partner. Chen’s colleagues signed a statement accusing the government of trying to criminalize routine academic collaboration. “We are all Gang Chen,” they wrote.
In asking a federal judge to drop the charges, Rachael S. Rollins, the U.S. district attorney in Boston, said that “after careful assessment … our office has concluded that we can no longer meet our burden of proof at trial.”
In another high-profile case, a judge acquitted Anming Hu, a researcher at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, writing that “no rational jury” could conclude Hu intended to defraud NASA by hiding his ties to China. Testimony in Hu’s trial showed that federal investigators had pressed the university to cooperate despite a lack of evidence against the mechanical-engineering professor.
Federal prosecutors did record one conviction, against Charles M. Lieber, a Harvard University professor whom FBI agents caught on tape admitting that he had been “dishonest” and not “completely transparent” about his ties and financial affiliations with a Chinese university and Chinese-government foreign-talent recruitment program.
But Lieber’s case was an aberration not simply because of his conviction — for one, he was the rare white researcher charged. Nearly nine in 10 China Initiative cases had been brought against people of Chinese descent, according to an analysis by the MIT Technology Review.
The three-year investigation has had an impact on scientists of Chinese and Asian descent. An October 2021 survey by the University of Arizona and the Committee of 100 found that half of Chinese and Chinese American scientists at American research universities reported feeling “considerable fear or anxiety” that they were being “surveilled” by the U.S. government.
The chill risks freezing the talent pipeline into American colleges, laboratories, and high-tech start-ups. Another survey, by the American Physical Society, found that 43 percent of international graduate students and early-career scientists in physics currently in the United States perceive this country to be unwelcoming to international students and scholars.
Frank H. Wu, president of City University of New York Queens College and a legal scholar, called the Justice Department announcement “necessary but not sufficient.”
“All but extremists know well enough to say they’re against racial profiling,” Wu said. “In this area, because even Asian American native-born citizens are assumed to be perpetual foreigners, some folks have been open in expressing racial prejudice. They have generalized about all people of a background being spies or sleeper agents. So saying we’re not racists and denying there is racial profiling is nice. But it isn’t enough.”
Sarah Spreitzer, assistant vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, said the end of the China Initiative was “welcome news” that brings the Justice Department “more in line” with other federal agencies in terms of policies for research transparency and integrity.
Spreitzer noted that the White House recently issued research-security guidance laying out and standardizing disclosure requirements for universities and scientists receiving federal grants, including contracts, funding, and other ties from overseas entities.
Although the China Initiative is ending, the White House guidelines are a reminder that university researchers, particularly those who undertake international academic collaborations, will continue to operate in an environment of heightened scrutiny.
In his remarks, Olsen did not take the option of prosecutions off the table in certain cases. However, he said the Justice Department would work with other agencies to pursue civil or administrative remedies and penalties.
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