During the Trump administration, the infamous "China Initiative" (China Initiative) was launched in academia, and although the Biden administration announced its termination after taking office, the chilling effect remained.
According to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post on July 6, a survey published last week in the prestigious international scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showed that after more than three years of investigation into the China Action Plan, more than one-third of Chinese-American scientists "feel unwelcome," nearly three-quarters (72 percent) "feel unsafe as academic researchers," and about 70 percent "fearful of the U.S. government's investigation of Chinese-American researchers."
The report cites cases such as the Chen Gang case at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which reveals the U.S. government's political manipulation and violation of the rule of law, and points out that these practices have put everyone in the academic community at risk and accelerated the return of Chinese scientists.
The "fear and unease" of researchers is even greater in key areas of U.S.-China competition, such as engineering, computing and life sciences, especially since 2018, when more and more researchers have chosen to return to China from the United States. Among these people are Sun Licheng and Xie Xiaoliang, who became academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in June this year.
Screenshot of the South China Morning Post report
Launched in November 2018, the China Action Plan requires 94 regional judicial departments to file at least one or two lawsuits against China each year to prevent China from "stealing information from the United States." The FBI also used the plan as an excuse to fabricate "Chinese academic espionage" out of thin air and provoke a large-scale unjust case. On February 23, 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the termination of the China Action Plan launched during the Trump administration.
Last week's report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences read: "However, while officially removing the name 'China Action Plan,' to what extent has the [U.S. government] changed substantially in response to the chilling effect experienced by Chinese-American scientists?" There are doubts in this regard. ”
The survey was conducted by five Chinese-American researchers from Harvard University, MIT, and Princeton University, conducted between December 2021 and March 2022, and included more than 1,300 scholars such as "tenured professors or tenured assistant professors" at U.S. universities.
So far, at least 150 scientists have been investigated, 24 of whom have been criminally charged, and "many more have been secretly investigated," the study said.
Hu Anming, a Chinese professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, is known as the "first defendant in the China Action Plan."
About 70 percent of respondents said they were "concerned about the U.S. government investigating Chinese-American researchers," and about 65 percent were concerned about joint research with China. Some 65 percent of respondents attributed this fear to the anti-China sentiment that swept the United States during the pandemic, while more than 80 percent said they had been insulted in a lay setting.
At the same time, two-fifths of respondents were also uneasy about the "frequent attacks on the Chinese government or Chinese policies" by U.S. government officials. Despite overall fear, 89 percent of respondents said they "want to contribute to U.S. leadership in technology," the survey said.
The findings come at a time when the U.S.-China rivalry is spreading from geopolitics to technology, with both sides seeking access to top scientific talent and the United States wooing its allies to step up efforts to curb China's access to advanced technologies, including semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
The survey found that researchers in engineering, computer science and life sciences experienced the most "fear and unease," and these fields are key concerns in the escalating "U.S.-China tech war," and the number of scientists in these fields choosing to return from the U.S. to Chinese is steadily increasing, especially since 2018.
Since the launch of the China Action Plan, several scientists have renounced their U.S. citizenship. On June 2 this year, the website of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Sciences published an announcement on the conversion of Sun Licheng (physical chemist) and Xie Xiaoliang (biophysical chemist) into academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: According to the relevant provisions of the Charter of Academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Interim Measures for the Conversion of Foreign Academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences into Academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sun Licheng and Xie Xiaoliang were converted from foreign academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The South China Morning Post also mentioned a number of cases related to the China Action Plan, most notably the arrest of Chen Gang, a prominent Chinese professor at MIT.
Data map: Professor Chen Gang of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
On January 14, 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice said that Chen Gang, an academician of the American Academy of Engineering and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was indicted and arrested for failing to disclose to the U.S. Department of Energy his work in China and the rewards he received. However, more than a year later, a review of Chen Gang found that many of the so-called "Tongzhong" allegations in the indictment were untenable, and the U.S. Department of Justice dropped the criminal charges against him on January 20, 2022.
The Washington Post described the withdrawal of Chen's case as marking the "most dramatic setback" in the U.S. government's so-called "China Action Plan." Chen Gang himself also said later that he originally "still believed in the US government."
In addition, in September 2021, Hu Anming, a Chinese professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, known as the "first defendant in the China Action Plan", has also been acquitted.
In fact, a large number of contentious lawsuits in the China Action Plan continue to generate fierce opposition. In January 2022, the Chinese American Federation organized a demonstration and protest outside the gate of the U.S. Department of Justice to demand the immediate cessation of the China Action Plan; At the same time, 192 Yale professors signed a letter to the U.S. attorney general arguing that the program was fundamentally flawed.
Earlier, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that both the so-called "China Action Plan" and the anti-Asian words and deeds that are very popular in the United States are the embodiment of the systemic racial discrimination problem in the United States and reflect the deep-rooted social diseases in the United States.
Wang Wenbin pointed out that the so-called "China Action Plan" launched by the judicial department of the previous US administration in 2018 to promote the presumption of guilt and artificially set annual case-handling targets is purely political manipulation, contrary to the spirit of the rule of law advocated by the United States itself, and will continue to be condemned and resisted by people of insight from all walks of life in the United States. We urge the relevant US administrative departments to earnestly listen to the objective and rational voices of all walks of life in the United States, abandon the Cold War mentality and ideological bias, correct erroneous practices, stop abusing judicial power to harass and suppress Chinese students and researchers studying in the United States, and provide favorable conditions for normal exchanges and cooperation between China and the United States in the fields of science and technology, humanities and so on.
This article is an exclusive manuscript of the Observer Network and may not be reproduced without authorization.