Oct 14, 2021 05:44 PM
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/us-p...72.article
INTRO: Academics across the US have the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) ‘China Initiative’ in their sights as cases prosecuted under this programme are being dismissed after wreaking havoc on the lives and careers of researchers in the country. They argue that the policy – created in 2018 under the Trump administration to pursue theft of intellectual property by China – creates a hostile environment for Chinese scientists and is tantamount to racial profiling.
The China Initiative has focused on researchers at US universities with undisclosed ties to China, for example through other universities, companies, or so-called state-sponsored talent recruitment programmes like the ‘Thousand Talents’ scheme. But opponents of the policy say researchers who are Chinese immigrants or of Chinese descent have been unfairly targeted. They point out that the DOJ has had to drop many of these cases, which upended the careers of numerous scientists, because they were flimsy, often based on charges of wire fraud and making false statements to government officials.
Anming Hu is one of a number of researchers of Chinese ancestry who was charged in the US with fraud relating to ties to Chinese research programmes, only to be acquitted when the case reached court
Most recently, University of Tennessee, Knoxville nanotechnologist Anming Hu, who was the first academic to go to a jury trial under that China Initiative, was acquitted in September after the espionage case against him crumbled. The Chinese-born Canadian citizen, indicted and arrested in February 2020, had worked for UT Knoxville since November 2013. The university fired Hu in October 2020 after suspending him without pay, and he was prosecuted by the DOJ twice. Now key faculty at UT Knoxville, including the senate faculty president, are calling on the university’s chancellor to give Hu his job back.
Hu’s case is similar to several that the DOJ dropped back in July, including one against Qing Wang, a former researcher with the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for over two decades and professor at Case Western Reserve University. Born in China and a US citizen for about 16 years, Wang was arrested in May 2020 for allegedly hiding funding he received through a Chinese talent recruitment programme, and was immediately fired.
Another well-known case that has been tossed is that of Xiaoxing Xi, the former chair of Temple University’s physics department who was arrested in 2015 and charged with spying for China. At a virtual hearing of the House of Representatives’ science committee on 5 October, Xi recounted how armed agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) raided his home at dawn, held his wife and two young daughters at gunpoint, and took him away in handcuffs. Born in China and earning his PhD in physics there, he and his wife came to the US in 1989 and eventually became US citizens.
The charges that he passed sensitive US technology to China were ‘totally false’, Xi testified. He said it took almost four months for the US government to drop the case against him. This only happened after leading experts in his field provided affidavits saying that the emails he had sent were not about the so-called ‘pocket heater’ technology that he was working on but were instead about his own widely published research. ‘But our life had been wrecked,’ Xi stated.
The exact same early morning raid scene was repeated later for Hu and Wang, he said. In 2017, Xi sued the FBI for violating his constitutional rights, alleging that he was targeted due to his ethnicity. That suit is reportedly still pending.
‘People are terrified, they are afraid that they may be the next,’ Xi told the congressional committee. The problem is that US law enforcement officials consider Chinese professors, scientists and students so-called ‘non-traditional collectors’, or spies, for China, he said. ‘We are presumed guilty until proven innocent,’ Xi continued. ‘It is only a matter of time and chance that any scientist of Chinese descent may get the knock at his or her door by FBI agents and be snatched away.’
Without serious evidence that they have stolen technology, academics are being charged for failure to disclose their activities in China, Xi testified. He noted that academic collaboration with China was once encouraged by the US government and universities, and joining a Chinese government talent programme was celebrated just like similar prestigious talent programmes in other countries... (MORE)
INTRO: Academics across the US have the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) ‘China Initiative’ in their sights as cases prosecuted under this programme are being dismissed after wreaking havoc on the lives and careers of researchers in the country. They argue that the policy – created in 2018 under the Trump administration to pursue theft of intellectual property by China – creates a hostile environment for Chinese scientists and is tantamount to racial profiling.
The China Initiative has focused on researchers at US universities with undisclosed ties to China, for example through other universities, companies, or so-called state-sponsored talent recruitment programmes like the ‘Thousand Talents’ scheme. But opponents of the policy say researchers who are Chinese immigrants or of Chinese descent have been unfairly targeted. They point out that the DOJ has had to drop many of these cases, which upended the careers of numerous scientists, because they were flimsy, often based on charges of wire fraud and making false statements to government officials.
Anming Hu is one of a number of researchers of Chinese ancestry who was charged in the US with fraud relating to ties to Chinese research programmes, only to be acquitted when the case reached court
Most recently, University of Tennessee, Knoxville nanotechnologist Anming Hu, who was the first academic to go to a jury trial under that China Initiative, was acquitted in September after the espionage case against him crumbled. The Chinese-born Canadian citizen, indicted and arrested in February 2020, had worked for UT Knoxville since November 2013. The university fired Hu in October 2020 after suspending him without pay, and he was prosecuted by the DOJ twice. Now key faculty at UT Knoxville, including the senate faculty president, are calling on the university’s chancellor to give Hu his job back.
Hu’s case is similar to several that the DOJ dropped back in July, including one against Qing Wang, a former researcher with the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for over two decades and professor at Case Western Reserve University. Born in China and a US citizen for about 16 years, Wang was arrested in May 2020 for allegedly hiding funding he received through a Chinese talent recruitment programme, and was immediately fired.
Another well-known case that has been tossed is that of Xiaoxing Xi, the former chair of Temple University’s physics department who was arrested in 2015 and charged with spying for China. At a virtual hearing of the House of Representatives’ science committee on 5 October, Xi recounted how armed agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) raided his home at dawn, held his wife and two young daughters at gunpoint, and took him away in handcuffs. Born in China and earning his PhD in physics there, he and his wife came to the US in 1989 and eventually became US citizens.
The charges that he passed sensitive US technology to China were ‘totally false’, Xi testified. He said it took almost four months for the US government to drop the case against him. This only happened after leading experts in his field provided affidavits saying that the emails he had sent were not about the so-called ‘pocket heater’ technology that he was working on but were instead about his own widely published research. ‘But our life had been wrecked,’ Xi stated.
The exact same early morning raid scene was repeated later for Hu and Wang, he said. In 2017, Xi sued the FBI for violating his constitutional rights, alleging that he was targeted due to his ethnicity. That suit is reportedly still pending.
‘People are terrified, they are afraid that they may be the next,’ Xi told the congressional committee. The problem is that US law enforcement officials consider Chinese professors, scientists and students so-called ‘non-traditional collectors’, or spies, for China, he said. ‘We are presumed guilty until proven innocent,’ Xi continued. ‘It is only a matter of time and chance that any scientist of Chinese descent may get the knock at his or her door by FBI agents and be snatched away.’
Without serious evidence that they have stolen technology, academics are being charged for failure to disclose their activities in China, Xi testified. He noted that academic collaboration with China was once encouraged by the US government and universities, and joining a Chinese government talent programme was celebrated just like similar prestigious talent programmes in other countries... (MORE)