Republicans Seek to Revive China Initiative

Gang Chen, a mechanical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he is no longer the same person he was before he was arrested early one morning in January 2021.

In part of a controversial series of Justice Department investigations into Chinese academics and others, Chen was charged with failing to disclose various financial ties and affiliations with Chinese entities on a federal grant application. His life was flipped upside down in an instant. Although the charges were dismissed a year later, Chen says that his family now “lives in constant fear.”

“I’m still often woken up by my wife’s cry because in her dreams she remembers the police shouting beside her bed the morning I was arrested,” he said. “And every time I cross the border after coming back from an international trip, I’m scared of being stopped.”

Experiences like Chen’s could become more common if House Republicans succeed in bringing back a Trump-era program that investigated individuals or organizations with ties to China, higher ed groups and advocates warned this week. The GOP representatives are voting on a slew of bills related to China and national security as part of a continued effort to combat the country’s influence in the United States.

One of the bills, the Protect America’s Innovation and Economic Security From CCP Act, would essentially revive DOJ’s now-defunct China Initiative, which was put in place during the Trump administration in 2018 and led to the arrests of Chen and many others like him.

Republicans say the initiative sought to counter any threat of economic espionage conducted for the “Communist regime.” But Democrats, education lobbyists and Asian American advocates argue it was ineffective in squashing security concerns and justified countless instances of racial profiling and discrimination.

The Biden administration ended the program in 2022. But now, as GOP lawmakers reiterate concerns about China’s influence on American higher education and some colleges rethink their ties to the country, conservative lawmakers say it’s time to reverse what they have called a Democratic “bow to the woke mob.” The House will vote on the bill today.

Critics of the legislation, including Asian American organizations, say the bill violates civil rights and would be detrimental to the future of the science and technology industry. (Even if the bill clears the House, it’s unlikely to move forward in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The White House also opposes the legislation.)

The American Council on Education and six other associations wrote in a letter to House leaders that the bill would “cause more unnecessary harm to our researchers.”

ACE is also “strongly opposed” to separate legislation that would prevent colleges and universities from receiving any Department of Homeland Security funds if they host controversial Chinese language instruction organizations known as Confucius Institutes or have any type of working relationships with the majority of Chinese colleges or universities. That includes money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that goes to responding to natural disasters.

House lawmakers voted 249 to 161 in favor of that bill, which the White House also opposes.

“This broad ban would likely end student exchange programs between U.S. and Chinese institutions, study abroad programs for U.S. students in China, as well as important research and development work on issues of national importance, which are already in compliance with the various research security provisions created to protect U.S. research,” ACE wrote.

‘Chilling Effect’

Republicans argue that the China initiative successfully disrupted Beijing’s “campaign of intellectual property theft” and that putting an end to most partnerships with Chinese institutions would strengthen America’s competitive advantage.

More than 160 people or organizations were indicted under the initiative, according to a news release from Republican leaders about the legislation. At least 45 of those cases led to convictions or guilty pleas.

“Arguably, these cases brought under the China Initiative were just the tip of the iceberg,” the news release says.

But Democrats and civil rights advocates point to the many failed attempts to convict faculty members of Chinese descent, saying the chilling effect these court cases have on the success and competition level of U.S. research outweighs any national security benefits. The processes for the scholars arrested who eventually had the charges dismissed were long-lasting and traumatic.

The first jury trial conducted under the China Initiative, which was held in 2021, ended in a hung jury and a mistrial. Others, including the 2022 trial of Franklin Feng Tao, a former associate professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas, initially ended in conviction, but the verdicts were later overturned.

But some of the damage had already been done, said Gisela Kusakawa, executive director of the Asian American Scholar Forum, who spoke alongside Chen from MIT and other impacted individuals at a closed briefing with lawmakers on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

Surveys have also shown that about half of Chinese scientists at U.S. universities report concerns about being surveilled by the U.S. government, and that fears about a China-focused Department of Justice initiative to combat theft of trade secrets may be harming American science.

And while data shows that the number of Chinese scientists leaving the U.S. every year was on the rise before 2018, the trend has accelerated since the initiative was introduced—skyrocketing from 900 scientists departing in 2010 to 2,621 in 2021, according to a study released in 2023.

Some experts suggest that rather than protecting domestic security by removing possible spies, the initiative and its investigations may have strengthened China by encouraging more scientists to relocate there.

“We find it very important to ensure that while we’re working to safeguard our security we also are protecting Americans here at home in the United States,” Kusakawa said. “The reality is that the chilling effect and the deterrent of international talents from coming to the United States would actually hurt our country.”

Deborah Altenburg, vice president for research, policy and advocacy at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, which signed the ACE letter, said that the end of the China Initiative didn’t cease all espionage investigations. “There remains an active task force at the FBI that is focused on malign intent from the Chinese,” she said. “This bill takes us backwards in focusing on a specific country, and we really need to be country-agnostic with regards to how we evaluate risk, because China is not the only place that may be trying to conduct theft.”

In the eyes of Representative Judy Chu, a California Democrat and chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, “The China Initiative is the new McCarthyism.”

“Instead of looking for those who may exhibit evidence of spying, what this does is make someone’s nexus to China the first criteria,” she said. “It allows the [Justice Department] to target individuals because of their ethnic background first and then find evidence of a crime.”

Chu believes that the push to revive such investigations is all politically motivated, especially with the election just two months away.

“Republicans are falling all over each other to be more tough on China than the next one,” she said. “They don’t care who they point the finger at.”