Table of Contents

Overview

FBI Director’s Profiling Approach

NIH’s Own “China Initiative”

Criminalizing China

The Ethnic Targeting of Chinese Scientists

Links and References

Overview

On November 1, 2018, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Session announced the launch of the China Initiative to combat national security threats and economic espionage emanating from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

“This Initiative will identify priority Chinese trade theft cases, ensure that we have enough resources dedicated to them, and make sure that we bring them to an appropriate conclusion quickly and effectively.” Sessions said.

President Donald Trump fired Sessions less than a week later, but the China Initiative remained in operation for 1,210 days until it was ended by the Joe Biden Administration on February 23, 2022.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) had no definition of what constitutes a China Initiative case.  DOJ created an online report on what it considered to be Chinese Initiative cases.  The online report was last updated on November 19, 2021, three months before the initiative officially ended.  

According to MIT Technology Review, there have been 77 known China Initiative cases impacting 162 individuals.  Based on a comprehensive analysis of the cases, MIT Technology Review concluded that the initiative had increasingly charged academics with “research integrity” issues.  

Nearly 90% of the defendants charged were of Chinese heritage, lending credence to wide-spread allegations that scientists and researchers of Chinese origin were racially profiled and targeted under the China Initiative despite denials by the government.

The DOJ China Initiative cases included only indictments and prosecutions.  It did not include  investigations or surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and other federal law enforcement agencies and grant agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

NIH ran its own China Initiative.  By March 23, 2023, a year after the official end of the China Initiative, NIH’s own “China initiative” had upended hundreds of lives and destroyed scores of academic careers.

In contrast to the very public criminal prosecutions of academic scientists under the China Initiative, NIH’s version was conducted behind closed doors.

FBI Director’s Profiling Approach 

The first thunder of the New Red Scare came on February 13, 2018, when FBI Director Christopher Wray testified in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing and targeted all students, scholars and scientists of Chinese origin as a national security threat to the United States.

Wray responded to a question in the hearing, “I think in this setting I would just say that the use of nontraditional collectors, especially in the academic setting, whether it’s professors, scientists, students, we see in almost every field office that the FBI has around the country. It’s not just in major cities. It’s in small ones as well. It’s across basically every discipline.”  

Asian American advocates were outraged by Wray’s presumption that every Chinese professor, scientist, and student was guilty of collecting intelligence for the Chinese government until proven innocent.

Conflating the stereotype of “perpetual foreigners” and the loyalty of Asian Americans to the United States, Wray pledged to pursue a “whole-of-society” approach to address the threat of China.  His use of the term “non-traditional collectors” for spies parallelled “thousand grains of sand” during the prosecution of Dr. Wen Ho Lee and “fifth column” in referral to Japanese Americans during World War II.

Qian Xuesen, also known as Hsue-shen Tsien, a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, became a victim of the Second Red Scare during the Cold War era, facing accusations of “communist sympathies” despite his contributions to American scientific advancement.

Fourteen Asian American community organizations wrote to Wray on March 1, 2018, and called for “an opportunity to discuss how well-intentioned public policies might nonetheless lead to troubling issues of potential bias, racial profiling, and wrongful prosecution.”  Wray never responded to the letter.

References and Links

Wikipedia: Qian Xuesen

2020/02/02 The Intercept: The FBI’s China Obsession - The U.S. Government Secretly Spied on Chinese American Scientists, Upending Lives and Paving the Way for Decades of Discrimination

2019/12/31 Bloomberg: As China Anxiety Rises in U.S., Fears of New Red Scare Emerge

2019/07/20 New York Times: A New Red Scare Is Reshaping Washington

2018/03/23 Huffington Post: FBI Director Defends Remarks That Chinese People In U.S. Pose Threats

2018/03/08 Washington Post Opinion: America’s new — and senseless — Red Scare

2018/03/01 14 Coalition Organizations: Coalition letter to FBI Director Wray

2018/03/01 Committee of 100: Community Organizations Call for Meeting with FBI Director Christopher Wray Regarding Profiling of Students, Scholars, and Scientists with Chinese Origins

2018/02/27 Asia Times: FBI director’s grave mistake on targeting Chinese-Americans

2018/02/16 纽约都市新闻网: 华裔议员严厉谴责Rubio和Wray针对中国学生的极端言论

2018/02/15 CAPAC: CAPAC Members on Rubio and Wray’s Remarks Singling Out Chinese Students as National Security Threats

2018/02/14 Inside Higher Ed: The Chinese Student Threat?

2018/02/13 Advancing Justice | AAJC: FBI Director’s Shock Claim: Chinese Students Are a Potential Threat

2018/02/13 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: Hearing on Global Threats and National Security

2016/05/25 60 Minutes: Collateral Damage 

2015/05/10 New York Times: Accused of Spying for China, Until She Wasn’t

2000/09/14 New York Times: Statement by Judge in Los Alamos Case, With Apology for Abuse of Power.

1999/12/11 Washington Post: China Prefers the Sand to the Moles

1964/02/02 New York Times: F.B.I. Chief Warns of Red China Spies

NIH’s Own “China Initiative”

According to the Science Magazine, Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)  sent a missive to more than 10,000 institutions on August 20, 2018, asserting that "threats to the integrity of U.S. biomedical research exist" and highlighted the failure to disclose "substantial resources from other organizations, including foreign governments." Collins wrote that "in the weeks and months ahead you may be hearing from [NIH] regarding … requests about specific … personnel from your institution."

Dubbed as NIH’s own “China Initiative,” NIH began sending letters to dozens of major U.S. research universities in March 2019, asking them to provide information about specific faculty members with NIH funding who are believed to have links to foreign governments that NIH did not know about.

Universities reportedly scrambled to respond to the unprecedented queries.  Some academic administrators worry the exercise could cast a chill over all types of international scientific collaborations.  Others fear that the inquiry may become a vehicle to impugn the loyalty of any faculty member—and especially any foreign-born scientists—who maintain overseas ties.  At some institutions, every researcher flagged by NIH was Chinese American.

The vaguely worded letters did not contain specific accusations, nor did it explain any aspect of the process.

By March 23, 2023, a year after the official end of the China Initiative, Science reported that NIH’s “China initiative” has upended hundreds of lives and destroyed scores of academic careers.

In contrast to the very public criminal prosecutions of academic scientists under the China Initiative, NIH’s version was conducted behind closed doors.

More than one in five of the 246 scientists targeted were banned from applying for new NIH funding for as long as 4 years—a career-ending setback for most academic researchers. And almost two-thirds were removed from existing NIH grants.

Some 81% of the scientists cited in the NIH letters identify as Asian, and 91% of the collaborations under scrutiny were with colleagues in China.

In only 14 of the 246 cases—a scant 6%—did the institution fail to find any evidence to back up NIH’s suspicions.

NIH is by far the largest funder of academic biomedical research in the United States, and some medical centers receive hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the agency. So when senior administrators heard Michael Lauer, NIH deputy director for extramural research, say a targeted scientist “was not welcome in the NIH ecosystem,” they understood immediately what he meant—and that he was expecting action.

“If NIH says there’s a conflict, then there’s a conflict, because NIH is always right,” says David Brenner, who was vice chancellor for health sciences at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), in November 2018 when the institution received a letter from Lauer asking it to investigate five medical school faculty members, all born in China. “We were told we have a problem and that it was up to us to fix it.”

In a panel discussion hosted by the University of Michigan in March 2024, Professor Ann Chih Lin, asserted that NIH made it clear that if they couldn’t resolve concerns regarding a faculty member and a grant, NIH would not only require universities to repay the grant, but also investigate universities’ entire portfolio of NIH grants. Fearing the loss of grant money, universities often approached the implicated professors and encouraged them to resign voluntarily or retire early. This strategy aimed to avoid a public disciplinary hearing or grievance process, which could bring unwanted attention to the case. Professors involved in such investigations typically refrained from discussing their cases to protect both themselves and the universities, often choosing to depart quietly.

References and Links

2024/03/29 University of Michigan News: US universities secretly turned their back on Chinese professors under DOJ’s China Initiative

2023/02/23 Science: Pall of Suspicion 

2019/03/01 Science: NIH letters asking about undisclosed foreign ties rattle U.S. universities

Criminalizing China

The name of China Initiative by itself is problematic.

"Using 'China' as the glue connecting cases prosecuted under the Initiative's umbrella creates an overinclusive conception of the threat and attaches a criminal taint to entities that possess 'China-ness,' based on PRC nationality, PRC national origin, Chinese ethnicity, or other expressions of connections with 'China.,'" Professor Margaret Lewis wrote in her article "Criminalizing China" in 2020.

Her article further contends that, when assessed in light of the goals of deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and retribution, it is worrisome that the prosecution and punishment of people and entities rests in part on a connection with “China.” A better path is to discard the “China Initiative” framing, focus on cases’ individual characteristics, and enhance the Department of Justice’s interactions with nongovernmental experts.

Margaret K. Lewis, Criminalizing China, 111 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 145 (2020).

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol111/iss1/3

The Ethnic Targeting of Chinese Scientists

On November 19, 2020, The China Project produced a video titled “The China Initiative: The ethnic targeting of Chinese scientists and the subsequent brain drain.” (7:30)

The China Project talked to lawyers, academics, and victims of the China Initiative for their perspective.  Many Chinese and Chinese American researchers feel that the program has placed a target on their back, and that they are being unfairly targeted for their Chinese ethnicity. There are also critics who say the Initiative has done little more than drive talent away from the U.S.

Jump to:

Overview

FBI Director’s Profiling Approach

NIH’s Own “China Initiative”

Criminalizing China

Ethnic Targeting of Chinese Scientists