- Study
published by renowned international science journal questions whether
formal rollback of Trump-era China Initiative has changed anything
- Engineering,
computer and life sciences researchers felt the most fear and sense of
unease, poll of over 1,300 academics at US universities finds
--
Over
a third of Chinese-origin scientists in the US do not feel welcome in
the country, and close to three-quarters do not feel safe as academic
researchers, a survey published in a renowned international science
journal has revealed. The
online poll, carried out after three years of the Trump-era China
Initiative, also highlighted widespread fear among scientists of Chinese
descent living the US.
Launched by the US Justice
Department in late 2018 to probe scientists’ and academics’ potential
links with the Chinese state, the initiative sparked concerns of racial
bias and creating a culture of fear, and also triggered an exodus of
Chinese-origin scholars. It was dropped in February last year, with US national security officials declaring a more “threat-driven”approach.
“There
are questions, however, regarding the extent to which the formal
dropping of the ‘China Initiative’ name has been accompanied by
substantive changes in the [US] government’s practices that address the
chilling effects experienced by scientists of Chinese descent,” the
report published in renowned international journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) last week said.
At least 150
scientists had been investigated so far, with criminal charges laid
against two dozen of them under the initiative, and “many more
investigated in secret”, it said.
The study was
carried out by five Chinese-origin researchers in the United States – a
Harvard biostatistics scientist, a nuclear engineer at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technlogy (MIT), and three “contemporary China” experts from Princeton. More
than 1,300 “tenured or tenure-track” academics at US universities were
surveyed for the poll, carried out between December 2021 and March last
year.
Chinese-American scientists fear US racial profiling
The
findings come as the US-China rivalry spills over from the geopolitical
arena to science and technology, with both seeking to win over the
brightest scientific minds and Washington leading its allies in efforts
to curb Beijing’s access to advanced technology, including
semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
Researchers in the fields
of engineering, and computer and life sciences, all of key concern in
the escalating US-China tech war, experienced the most fear and sense of
unease amid intensifying hostility between the rival powers, the report
said. There
had also been a steady increase in scientists in these fields choosing
to return to China, with the trend more notable since 2018, the study
found.
Around 70 per cent of the respondents said they were fearful
of “US government investigations into Chinese-origin researchers” and
some 65 per cent were worried about joint research with China.
A
study published by the science journal Nature in May last year said dual
affiliations and US-China collaborations had fallen sharply by 2021 due
to fears over drawing US government suspicions.
About 65 per
cent of respondents in the PNAS report attributed the fear to
anti-Chinese sentiments sweeping the US with the arrival of the
coronavirus pandemic, and more than 80 per cent reported having
experienced insults in an non-professional setting. Two-fifths
also expressed unease over frequent attacks by US government officials
on the “Chinese government or Chinese policies” and a similar number
worried that their co-researchers, family members or friends might be
targeted by the Chinese government in retaliation for something they did
or said.
However, despite the overall fearful
sentiment, an overwhelming 89 per cent of respondents “indicated their
desire to contribute to the US leadership in science and technology”,
the report said.
Some high-profile cases under the initiative saw
US-based academics’ careers and reputations ruined overnight by their
suspected Chinese links. In
2021, Chinese-born professor Gang Chen, former head of mechanical
engineering at MIT and a member of the US National Academy of
Engineering, was accused of lying about China ties in funding papers. He
was arrested, his lab was closed and his research group was disbanded.
But all charges were dropped a year later, with the Justice Department
admitting it could not prove its case.
Non-Chinese academics were
also caught up in the campaign. In April, retired Harvard professor
Charles Lieber was placed under house arrest for six months and fined
hundreds of thousands of dollars after being convicted in 2021 of trying
to deny his ties to China and participation in Beijing’s Thousand
Talents Programme, a project to recruit scientists and strengthen
research.
The five scientists behind the PNAS
report said they carried out the poll on behalf of the Asian American
Scholar Forum, a non-profit organisation set up in response to Gang’s
case “to promote academic belonging, openness, freedom, and equality for
all”. US
suspicion of Chinese scientists actually predates the launch of the
China Initiative. Sherry Chen, a National Weather Service hydrologist,
was accused of spying for China a decade ago. Last November, she
received US$550,000, and an additional US$1.25 million over 10 years, as
settlement for the wrongful prosecution.
A number of Chinese scientists have given up their US citizenship since the launch of the China Initiative. The
latest to do so was biophysical chemist Xie Xiaoliang, who returned to
China last month. The former Harvard professor is best known for helping
to invent the single-cell DNA amplification method in 2012. Zhu
Songchun, an accomplished computer scientist, gave up a professorship
at the University of California, Los Angeles to become dean of the
Institute for AI at Peking University in 2020.
Sylvie Zhuang