The University of Michigan Faculty Senate’s Davis, Markert, and Nickerson Academic Freedom Lecture Committee held a panel discussion Monday afternoon in Weiser Hall on the China Initiative and its aftermath. The China Initiative was created by the Department of Justice in 2018 to combat Chinese national security threats by identifying and prosecuting people involved with trade secret theft, hacking and economic espionage.
The panel was co-sponsored by the College of Engineering, Ford School of Public Policy, Department of Asian Languages and Culture, Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, Department of Political Science and the laboratory of Pramod Sangi Reddy, U-M professor of mechanical engineering and materials science.
Since the China Initiative’s implementation in 2018, the rate of Chinese scientists leaving the U.S. has skyrocketed. Eighty-one percent of the scientists targeted through the China Initiative identify as Asian and 72% of Chinese scientists report feeling unsafe as an academic researcher in the U.S. The China Initiative was terminated in 2022, but investigations into Chinese scientists have persisted.
At the event, the panelists condemned the initiative as having negative impacts on Chinese scientists in the United States and discouraging scientific collaboration between the U.S. and China. A major topic of discussion for the panel was how investigations stemming from the China Initiative contain misunderstandings of basic scientific procedure and federally funded grant agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, encourage universities to terminate employees being investigated for minor or unintentional infractions.
The first speaker on the panel was Gang Chen, professor of power engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was investigated and detained by U.S. federal law enforcement following the implementation of the China Initiative. Chen said he was first confronted by customs officials in January 2020 at Boston Logan International Airport and, though he had heard about the China Initiative, he was not initially concerned by this encounter.
“I wrote to the MIT president that night, and the next day he replied immediately that this was terrifying,” Chen said. “I asked him, ‘Why?’ To me, I was like, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’ ”
Chen said MIT administration offered to provide him with an external lawyer and found a different law firm to represent the university. After almost a year of Chen’s legal counsel looking into his records, he was told by his legal counsel in December 2020 that he would not be prosecuted.
On Jan. 14, 2021, Chen was arrested for allegedly receiving $29 million in foreign funding, $19 million of which was from the People’s Republic of China’s Southern University of Science and Technology.
“My wife was very angry,” Chen said. “She asked, ‘What’s his crime?’ The agent responded ‘He took $19 million.’ My wife asked, ‘Where is that 19 million dollars?’ The agent responded, ‘At MIT.’”
Following the news of his arrest, Chen said his colleague, Yoel Fink, a professor of materials science and engineering and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, organized faculty members to write an open letter in support of Chen. The letter concluded with the line ‘we are all Gang Chen,’ which gained traction in the media. News headlines changed from espousing accusations of grant fraud to disparaging the case as criminalizing science.
Chen’s charges were dropped in January 2022. Since then, Chen has been sharing more information about the China Initiative at events like Monday’s panel and said he believes speaking out against the China Initiative is essential.
“We can’t wait until other people do the work for us,” Chen said. “I think it is my duty to speak out.”
Peter Zeidenberg, a lawyer whose practice has represented many academics and scientists targeted under the China Initiative, also spoke at the panel. Zeidenberg said investigators from the DOJ often have a perception that the sharing of fundamental scientific research between the U.S. and China is harmful.
“They’re coming from a perspective of trade secret theft, like in a company,” Zeidenberg said. “But when you’re working for a grant with the University of Michigan, that’s what your job is: to engage in scientific intercourse where you’re sharing the results of your research.”
Zeidenberg said even though the China Initiative has ceased, the DOJ created the Disruptive Technology Strike Force in 2023, which has very similar effects on scientific research.
Zeidenberg said even cases under these programs that are not criminally investigated can have devastating impacts on scientists’ careers.
“I have client after client who are not charged in criminal cases as a result of this, but nevertheless, their grant funding is canceled,” Zeidenberg said. “They cannot get grant funding from their agencies, and as a result, they are not able to stay and do their research. The perverse result of that is that the only place they can go to work at that point is China.”
Ruixue Jia, professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, spoke at the panel about research she conducted on collaborations between scientists from the U.S. and China since 2010. Jia’s research found that since the implementation of the China Initiative, collaborations between U.S. and Chinese scientists, which had been increasing in frequency in scientific publications since 2010, began to experience a decline.
“We found that these investigations actually lead to a decline in productivity for scientists who had a collaboration history with China,” Jia said. “If you only account for the number of publications, the effect is not too large, at around a 2% (decline). However, if you take into account citations, the effect becomes sizable. Remember, this is a very short term, and the effects are already sizable.”
Although the China Initiative has been officially repealed, Jia’s research found that scientists do not feel that U.S.-China tensions have been alleviated.
“None of the scientists that we interviewed believe (the China Initiative) is really ending,” said Jia. “There’s certainly a very clear reticence toward starting new projects with China.”
Ann Chih Lin, U-M professor of public policy, closed the panel by discussing how federal grant agencies conduct investigations under the China Initiative. She specifically focused on the NIH, which provides funding for research projects at universities around the country. Lin said NIH investigations under the China Initiative have been frequent and often devastating to their subjects’ careers and personal lives.
“The NIH contacts universities to tell them about concerns with a staff member and their particular grant,” Lin said. “The NIH then informs the university that if a professor cannot be cleared adequately, they will be forced to repay the professor’s grant and funding for other NIH grants will be pulled.”
Lin said this can lead universities to prioritize protecting grant funding over the professors being investigated.
“The university goes to the professor in question and says, ‘We don’t want you to be prosecuted, but we also don’t want your colleagues’ grants to be jeopardized,’ ” Lin said. “‘If you retire early or resign voluntarily, all of this goes away.’ ”
LSA senior Eli Chapman, who attended Monday’s panel, told The Daily in an interview that Chen’s story was particularly interesting to him.
“You can hear statistics and you can read about things, but hearing from a person who actually went through this experience really added a different element to it that made it very personal,” Chapman said.
Chapman said he believes spreading the word about stories like Chen’s is important in creating discourse about the China Initiative.
“The more publicization, the better,” Chapman said. “If we can hear stories like Chen’s, then people start to realize how messed up it has been. If we let the government control the narrative, that’s when the bad sentiment is going to really start.”
Daily Staff Reporter Liam McCanny can be contacted at mccl@umich.edu.