Hounded academics tell of suffering in US

In April 2018, Anming Hu, a Chinese-Canadian associate professor at the University of Tennessee, received an unexpected visit from two FBI agents.

The FBI had downloaded some Chinese material about his summer seminar in China from a public website and asked him what he did in China.

Hu told the FBI: "I taught lectures there, the lectures that I have already taught in many American universities and conferences."

One of the FBI agents looked at Hu and asked him if he was a member of the prestigious Thousand Talents Program of the Chinese government.

"I said, no, I'm not. The FBI guy says, 'No, I mean, you should be.' I say, why do I have to be? The FBI says, 'You're so clever, you should be one of the Thousand Talents members.' I said, unfortunately, I'm not," Hu said.

Hu, the first academic to stand trial under the US government's so-called China Initiative, shared his story with others targeted by the program in a panel discussion themed "The 'China Initiative,' Collateral Damage, and the Pursuit of 'Justice' by the DOJ". It was hosted by the Committee of 100, or C100, an organization for Chinese-American leaders from various fields, during its 2022 annual conference on Friday.

The "China Initiative" was launched by the Department of Justice in November 2018, purportedly "to tackle Chinese espionage in the United States". It was formally discontinued in February for what critics have called dubious investigations and abusive prosecutions.

"I'm very lucky that my lawyer defended me very successfully," Hu said. But he said that the process for him and his family was "very terrible and very painful".

Another panelist and target of the "China Initiative", Xiaoxing Xi, a physics professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, was charged by the US government based on emails he sent to Chinese colleagues through the university's email server.

The charges were about academic collaborations "based on my own widely published research", said Xi.

"It's not about the US company technology at all. A former federal prosecutor said that the DOJ weaponized grand jury disclosure because it thinks Chinese professors are spies but cannot prove it," he said.

Xi said that a former FBI agent said that the Department of Justice brought the cases against Chinese professors "because they want to interrupt, destruct and damage Chinese professors".

Gang Chen, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering and member of the American Academy of Engineering, shared his "China Initiative" experience in a video shown to the panel. "My American dream turned into a nightmare," Chen said.

He was arrested in his office on Jan 14, 2021, and accused of omitting affiliations with Chinese government institutions in grant applications to the government. Federal prosecutors dropped the charges against Chen in January.

Profiling revealed

According to a survey titled "Racial Profiling Among Scientists of Chinese Descent and Consequences for the US Scientific Community", conducted by the C100 last year, 42.2 percent of Chinese scientists feel they are racially profiled by the US government, while 8.6 percent of non-Chinese scientists share that sentiment. Half of the Chinese scientists report "feeling considerable fear and/or anxiety that they are surveilled by the US government", compared with 11.7 percent of non-Chinese scientists.

The findings highlight "the disproportionate treatment of Chinese scientists, researchers and academics under racially charged policies", said Gary Locke, a Chinese-American former politician and diplomat, in his speech at the C100 annual conference. Locke is the president of Bellevue College in Washington state.

"We're glad to see that the 'China Initiative' itself has been done away with, at least in name, but we still have to stay vigilant about the actual treatment of individuals so that no person is targeted solely based on their race or ethnicity or religion or country of origin," he added.

At the C100 reception, Qin Gang, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, suggested what Chinese Americans should do "to eliminate anti-Chinese and anti-Asian hate".

"For nearly 200 years, Chinese Americans have put in blood, sweat and tears to survive and thrive in the US, making important contributions to this land. But still, they have suffered from long-term discrimination, which has been compounded by the pandemic in the past two years," Qin said.

'Get engaged in politics'

"Faced with growing racism, Chinese Americans must unite and act, get more engaged in politics, get more integrated into American society and better protect your legitimate rights and interests."

After another C100 panel, "The Rise of Anti-Asian Hate" on Saturday, one of the panelists, Marita Etcubanez, the director of strategic initiatives for Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said that the "China Initiative" and the wider occurrence of anti-Asian hatred in US society are connected.

"I think anti-China rhetoric kind of bashing all of that is contributing to this larger environment of anti-Asian hate. So, the solutions that we are suggesting are connected. It's all interrelated," Etcubanez told China Daily.

"We need the government, one, to do a better job of enforcing anti-discrimination laws. Connected to that, our government itself cannot at the same time be contributing to the profiling and criminalization of certain segments of our community, which is why we were steadfastly advocating for the government to end the 'China Initiative'," Etcubanez said.