Donald Trump’s return to the White House is stoking fears that he could reinstate a failed scheme launched during his first term that aimed to crack down on Chinese espionage, but ended up becoming more of a witch-hunt. Doing so would not only be destructive to American innovation, but give China an upper-hand in the tech race.
The China Initiative, launched in 2018, was an extensive national security effort intended to prevent intellectual property theft and the transfer of US technological knowledge to China. It was led by the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation before being dismantled under the Biden administration in 2022.
It devolved into an ineffective racial profiling campaign targeting Asian American academics and left a string of wrongful accusations that upended researchers’ lives while doing little to stamp out suspected spying.
The president-elect’s return brings fresh anxiety that it will be reinstated. A bill advanced in the House earlier this year has been blasted by some lawmakers as an attempt to revive the programme under a different name.
Project 2025, the viral conservative policy white paper that has been linked to Trump’s agenda (he has tried to distance himself from it), expressly calls to “restart the China Initiative.” Trump has also surrounded himself with China hawks as he builds his new cabinet and campaigned on an “America First” vision.
But if his goal is putting America first, it would require recognizing that the nation is a land of immigrants, and welcoming the best and brightest from elsewhere gives it a major edge.
The China Initiative resulted in espionage, theft or intellectual property charges against just 0.0000934% of Chinese STEM students and researchers at US universities. But the chilling effect the programme had on science and tech in US academia has been severe.
For more than two decades, China has been the most important supplier of US-based scientists, according to a Stanford analysis. But the number leaving has been steadily increasing. After the China Initiative, departures surged by 75%— two-thirds relocated back to China. If anything, the policy apparently served up a major win for Beijing’s innovation ambitions.
It may seem hard to quantify just how much pushing out scientists of Chinese descent could tip the scales. But we could learn from history. The US launched a broad crackdown on suspected Communist sympathizers during the Red Scare era, including Caltech professor Qian Xuesen, eventually driving him to return to China. He became the “father of the Chinese missile programme.”
Former Navy Secretary Dan Kimball called it: “The stupidest thing this country ever did.” More recently, the contribution of a Chinese-born scientist helped the research that allowed Moderna to develop its covid vaccine in record time. The Stanford analysis found that scientists of Chinese descent who chose to stay in the US are finding it difficult to pursue their research, and roughly half are avoiding federal grant applications.
Other factors would make a revival of the China Initiative especially destructive to America’s tech goals. Skilled labour has been repeatedly identified as one of the biggest barriers to US efforts to maintain dominance in advanced sectors such as chip-making. China has been creating more STEM PhDs than the US. Recent economic malaise at home has been driving more Chinese talent abroad, and it would be in the US’s best interest to lure them.
At the same time, the risks of Chinese espionage should be taken seriously. Silicon Valley firms are increasingly on alert for intellectual property theft, escalating their vetting of staff and recruits.
That is wise, though it should be driven by evidence and not ethnicity. Data also suggests that hacking and cyberattacks are the preferred methods of spying. Rather than pouring vast resources into profiling individuals, the US should double down on investment in cybersecurity.
In July, roughly five years after he was indicted, former University of Kansas professor Franklin Tao had his China Initiative-era conviction reversed. Ahead of his trial in 2021, his wife told Bloomberg News that the family came to the US to “pursue the American dream.”
Instead, she found herself working three jobs to pay for her husband’s legal bills. His lawyer later said that the nightmare “virtually bankrupted” the family. Such cases give ammunition to China’s propaganda arm as it seeks talent for its high-tech ambitions.
Even the most tough-on-China policymakers should remember that the US can’t lose the values it boasts about to counter threats. Resuming attacks on scientists who come to America for research will only harm US innovation and national security interests in the long run. ©Bloomberg
