House bill aims to restart controversial DOJ program that targeted Chinese academics
JANUARY 2, 2024

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The Justice Department ended the controversial “China Initiative” nearly two years ago amid criticism of racial profiling. A House spending bill could revive the initiative.

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The Department of Justice ended a controversial program nearly two years ago called the China Initiative, which targeted mostly ethnic Chinese academics and their links to China. The program was stopped after criticism of racial profiling. Now, a proposed House spending bill wants to bring the initiative back. NPR’s Emily Feng has this report.

EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Gang Chen is a preeminent engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he says he is a changed man.

GANG CHEN: I’m no longer the same. I can never go back to the same as I was before.

FENG: That’s because in 2021, the FBI investigated him for past affiliations with Chinese institutions, affiliations that were previously encouraged by academia. It was an important case under the Justice Department’s China Initiative, an effort to prosecute Chinese espionage in the U.S. Ultimately, the charges against him were dismissed – Chen had done nothing wrong. But the damage has been lasting on him and his wife.

CHEN: I very often woke up in her crying during night because she was dreaming, and then in her dream, she was crying. So I understand her fear.

FENG: And though absolved, Chen has abandoned award-winning research in semiconductor materials because that’s now a point of U.S.-China tech competition and he feels it’s too sensitive.

CHEN: Why should I get into this? If I check a wrong box somewhere, made a mistake, I could be accused. Why should I risk this?

FENG: About 90% of the more than 70 cases prosecuted under the initiative involved people who were ethnically Chinese. Just about a quarter were convicted and usually for much lesser charges. In February 2022, the Department of Justice ended the China Initiative, citing in part racial and ethnic bias, though the FBI says it still has more than 2,000 cases related to China. The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment. And now a proposed House spending bill wants to restart the initiative.

CHEN: The China Initiative has fundamentally harmed the U.S. competitiveness. The biggest competition is on talents. And that really deterred a lot of talents coming to the U.S.