![]() ![]() Scientists and researchers born in China, especially those affiliated with talent programs, became one of the main targets.īut critics say that while the threat of economic espionage from China is real, the US government response has been disproportionate and ineffective. The US needed to respond, Barr said, with its own coordinated government approach. The Department of Justice said China posed a unique threat to US economic and technological superiority, and Attorney General William Barr later asserted that the country was engaged in “an aggressive, orchestrated, whole-of-government (indeed, whole-of-society) campaign … to surpass the United States as the world’s preeminent technological superpower.”Ĭhina, the argument went, relies on “ non-traditional collectors”-including businesspeople, academics, students, tourists, or anyone with what the DOJ terms a “ nexus to China”-to gather up little bits of intelligence. It was the first focused government program to go after espionage by a specific country. But the new program sought to put even more resources behind the issue. Economic espionage cases against China had already been accelerating under the Obama administration, with a focus on prosecuting theft of trade secrets. The China Initiative launched in November 2018, amid the Trump administration’s increasing economic protectionism and its trade war with China. “I believe the government must fully investigate the whole range of disturbing problems by our own law enforcement agencies revealed throughout this trial.” A “whole-of-society” threat “This trial has literally put the federal government’s China Initiative on trial,” said Jinliang Cai, the chairman of the nonprofit United Chinese Americans, in a press statement. “The standard is incredibly low to put a guy in jail and charge him with serious crimes, destroying his life and destroying his career.” “It’s just shocking,” says Yasheng Huang, a business school professor at MIT, who brought together a group of academics, known as the Asian American Scholar Forum, to discuss these issues after his colleague Gang Chen, the head of MIT’s mechanical engineering department, was arrested for grant fraud under the China Initiative. Regardless of whether the government continues to pursue Hu, many concerned academics feel that the case has confirmed the China Initiative’s shifting goalposts-without providing clearer answers on how to avoid suspicion themselves. The Department of Justice has said that it is still weighing its next steps, which could include moving to retry the case. Hu and his lawyer maintained that Hu filled it out according to university rules and disclosed his relationship on multiple other forms and in email exchanges with UT and a NASA contractor. The latter allegations hinged on a single administrative form at UT that the FBI says Hu filled out incorrectly to intentionally conceal a relationship with Beijing University. Sadiku never followed up with the university to correct the record.īy the time the case went to trial, the charges against Hu did not involve economic espionage- the original reason for the investigation-but, rather, six charges of wire fraud and making false statements. Sadiku also admitted to spreading false information about Hu that damaged his reputation in the international research community and giving UT false information implicating him as an operative for the Chinese military, which led the university to fire him. ![]() The testimony of the primary FBI agent on the case, Kujtim Sadiku, likely did not help: he admitted in court that his probe into Hu’s activities-which involved putting the researcher and his son under surveillance for 21 months, adding Hu to a no-fly list, and seizing his computer and phone-was based on false information, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel. Since 2018, such cases have been investigated under the “China Initiative,” a controversial multi-agency program that aims to detect, prosecute, and stop economic espionage linked to Beijing. Hu is one of dozens of scientists, mostly of Chinese descent, whom the US government has investigated over the years amid allegations that they were hiding their connections to China. They alleged that he had defrauded NASA, and therefore the US government, by purposely hiding his affiliations with a Chinese university. But a little less than two years later, they showed up again-this time to arrest him. ![]() Hu told the agents he had not participated in any talent programs, and the agents left shortly afterwards. Not too long ago, American universities encouraged their academics to build ties with Chinese institutions by means including the talent programs, but the US government is now suspicious of these programs, seeing them as a spy recruitment tool that the Chinese government could use to steal sensitive technology. ![]()
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