China Initiative
The China Initiative was a program by the United States Department of Justice to prosecute potential Chinese spies in American research and industry, in order to combat economic espionage. Launched in November 2018, the program targeted hundreds of prominent Chinese-American academics and scientists, of which an estimated 250 lost their jobs. Many more had their careers negatively impacted and the prosecutions also contributed to at least one suicide.
The prosecutions contributed to a rise in incidents of violence against Asian Americans from 2019 to 2020 and has been criticized as racially biased and ineffective. Some of the cases under the China Initiative were based on false evidence provided by the FBI. The Department of Justice claimed to have ended the program on February 23, 2022, mostly as a result of accusations that the China Initiative was racially profiling Chinese American citizens and other residents of Chinese origin or ancestry, however, there have been calls by the US government to revive the program. The initiative resulted in a large exodus of influential Chinese-American scientists, many of whom decided to move to China.
Origin
The China Initiative was launched to prosecute scientific researchers and academics affiliated with China. It was set in motion by the Department of Justice under then-US President Donald Trump's first Attorney General Jeff Sessions in November 2018, with the goal of preventing industrial espionage. The China Initiative was one of Session's last actions as the official Attorney General of the US, in which the DOJ promised aggressive pursuit of Chinese commercial theft. Trump and his administration believed that China was using researchers and students to steal American technological innovations. The program gained momentum amidst rising tensions between the US and China due to trade wars and exchanging tariffs.The DOJ maintains that there is no strict definition of what a China Initiative case is, but most of the cases involve researchers who failed to disclose Chinese funding on grant applications and many involve professors at US institutions. Despite the initiative's goal of combating espionage, only three out of fifty unsealed China Initiative cases alleged that secrets had been handed to Chinese agents as of 2021.
End
On 23 February 2022, the DOJ announced that it was ending the China Initiative, largely due to "perceptions that it unfairly painted Chinese Americans and United States residents of Chinese origin as disloyal." Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olsen said the decision did not mean the DOJ was abandoning its response to the threat posed by China, but rather that it wanted to pursue that goal differently. According to Olsen, the DOJ will continue to combat threats posed by the Chinese government; it will also continue to pursue the cases begun under the program.The China Initiative cases typically involved lying or omitting information on disclosure forms. Some cases resulted in convictions, like that of Charles Lieber and Meyya Meyyappan. Others have been reined in or abandoned, like that of Gang Chen, or defeated in trial like Anming Hu's. The suicide of Jane Ying Wu from Northwestern University is reported to be caused by the impact of the China initiative. A review of existing cases was conducted and the DOJ is "comfortable with where those cases are."
Aftermath
Although the China Initiative has officially ended, the "climate of fear and anxiety" has not dissipated and scientists are being pressured in other ways according to sources reported by the scientific journal Nature in February 2023. Universities have become more active in "assisting investigations and pursuing potential wrongdoing". Gang Chen states that "The government has not done enough" to allay concerns and "It has only intensified". Jenny Lee, a social scientist at University of Arizona, states that end of the China Initiative provided the illusion that scientists of Chinese descent would receive a reprieve from scrutiny, but the "chilling effect" is still present and the US government has continued to adopt policies and positions perpetuating the narrative that scientists from China are spies. In a survey published in February 2023, a link was found between fear of racial profiling and a desire among scientists to return to China.Chinese American scientists who have been caught up in cases such as Dr. Xiaoxing Xi and Gang Chen say that they are still afraid of doing research or applying for federal funding while Anming Hu has had trouble securing funding. Chen says that he fears the government would use the application forms against him as they did before. Xi sought damages for the harm he suffered due to his arrest but his claims were dismissed in March 2022. He spends much of his time raising awareness of anti-Asian sentiment as well as following cases of scientists in similar situations. Both Xi and Hu had their team sizes reduced from before their cases and Hu no longer takes on researchers and students from China to avoid risk. Chen also sought to avoid risk by switching research topics to one with less obvious commercial applications while avoiding contact with researchers and students from China. Hu claims that he would have progressed much further in his research level had he not been caught up in the China Initiative.
Revival
Two bills introduced by the Republican Party that passed the House of Representatives on September 11, 2024, have been described as reviving the China Initiative. The bills are part of "China Week", a House Republican-led effort to advance China-related legislation.Criticism
Under the China Initiative, the FBI opened thousands of investigations, yet setbacks prompted criticism of the program. In July 2021 six cases were dropped, and that September the case of Anming Hu ended with his acquittal, revealing "law enforcement errors and prosecutorial overzealousness."Ineffectiveness
According to a Bloomberg News analysis of the 50 indictments displayed on the China Initiative webpage, the program had not "been very successful at catching spies." Most of the cases listed by December 17, 2021, involved individual profiteering or career advancement by the accused, rather than state-directed spying. Despite this, many of these indictments portray the alleged crimes as for the benefit of China. Seton Hall University law professor Margaret Lewis described this as "a conflation of individual motives with a country's policy goals" that has led to the criminalization of "China-ness."A plurality of the indictments, representing 38% of the cases, charged academic researchers and professors with fraud for failure to disclose relationships with Chinese educational institutions. None of those accused of fraud had been found to have spied for China, and nearly half of those cases had been dropped. Around 20% of the cases involved violations of US sanctions or illegal exports. A smaller percentage concern cyber intrusions attributed to China. Only one fifth of the indictments are about economic espionage and most of them remain unresolved. Only three cases allege that secrets were transferred to Chinese agents. Andrew Lelling, a former US attorney in Boston, Massachusetts, explained that the number of cases regarding disclosure is large because espionage cases take longer to investigate.
Out of 77 known China Initiative cases, 19 involved scientists suspected of having participated in the Thousand Talents Plan, and within that group, 14 were accused of violation of research integrity standards due to failure to disclose all affiliations to Chinese entities on grant documentation. None of the 14 were accused of transferring American intellectual property to China. Of the 28 prosecutions brought forth under the China Initiative, only eight have resulted in convictions or guilty pleas. Only four were professors of Chinese descent and none were convicted for espionage or theft. According to Mark Cohen, a law school fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, "The government is settling for charges that have little to do with technology."
Zhengdong Cheng was imprisoned for 13 months after being arrested in August 2020. In September 2022, he was convicted for two charges of making false statements. Despite his conviction, Science characterized Cheng as "the latest case to crumble under the Department of Justice's China Initiative" because the majority of the nine counts of defrauding the government and making false statements charged against him were overturned. Cheng admitted to failure to disclose his work for Guangdong University of Technology and Southern University of Science and Technology during the NASA grant application process. He was sentenced to the 13 months of imprisonment he had already served since August 2020, a fine of $20,000, and a repayment of $86,876 to NASA.
Writing in 2024, The Economist stated that the China Initiative was a "largely unsuccessful attempt to root out Chinese spies from industry and academia."
Inconsistencies
Civil rights groups have pointed to inconsistencies in the DOJ's messaging on the China Initiative. An MIT Technology Review investigation found that the DOJ did not provide a clear definition of a China Initiative case or disclose how many cases it included. The lack of transparency, the investigation claims, makes it impossible to understand what exactly the program was, what its achievements were, and what the costs have been for those affected. According to Jeremy Wu of the APA Justice Task Force, without a precise definition of the boundaries and scope of the China Initiative, information could be manipulated and presented so as to fit the government's narrative.Some cases that were publicly described as China Initiative cases were absent from the program's webpage, including that of MIT professor Gang Chen. Chen was accused of failure to disclose contracts, appointments, and awards from Chinese entities while taking federal grants from the Department of Energy. A letter to MIT president Leo Rafael Reif from 170 MIT faculty members claimed that this was not true and presented several refutations of the allegations against Chen. The MIT president asserted that the contract in question was between MIT and a Chinese university, the Southern University of Science and Technology, to provide MIT with $25 million over five years. MIT paid for Chen's legal defense. Prosecutors recommended dropping charges against Chen and the US District Court dismissed the case in January 2022.
Other cases, including that of Cleveland Clinic researcher Qing Wang, were removed from the webpage after charges were dismissed. MIT Technology Review found that only 13 of 23 research integrity cases were listed on the webpage. Seven of those ended in dismissals and acquittals, and were removed. Of the 12 cases involving theft of trade secrets or economic espionage, only 10 were listed, and seven were charged with only theft of trade secrets but not espionage. Only one case charged both theft and espionage. MIT analysis showed that 17 cases and 39 defendants were removed from the China Initiative webpage while two cases and five defendants were added.
On 19 November, two days after MIT Technology Review approached the DOJ with questions about the China Initiative, significant revisions were made to the China Initiative webpage. Some items were deleted while other items were added. A former DOJ official suggested the webpage may have been organized less clearly than warranted given the scale and impact of the program. Some cases, such as one involving a turtle-smuggling ring, may have been added to it by mistake. According to the official, such errors may have been due to a new staff member's zeal in looking for cases with a "nexus to China."