‘China Initiative’: US rebadges Trump-era scheme seen as persecuting Chinese academics
GuardianFeb 24, 2022
The DOJ is scrapping the Trump-era China Initiative and imposing a higher bar for prosecutions of professors.
The policy, aimed at combating Chinese economic espionage, is being dropped after years of opposition from Asian Americans.
This is a step in the right direction. The CI has been reinforcing harmful stereotypes and brought multiple unsubstantiated cases against researchers that have been repeatedly thrown out by judges.
Chinese snooping on US intellectual property is still an enormous security problem. Whilst the Biden administration and DOJ are being forced by activists to roll back the program, Congress will need to find alternate ways to tackle this rampant problem.