Asian American groups are sounding the alarm after the House this week passed a bill seeking to revive the highly controversial, Trump-era surveillance program the China Initiative.
Lawmakers approved the measure Wednesday on a 237-180 vote. While the China Initiative, which expired in 2022, was intended to curb Chinese economic and technological espionage, many Asian American groups accused the program of racial profiling toward Asian scholars in the U.S. Now, many scientists, lawmakers and advocates are speaking out, saying they are fearful that if signed into law, the program would again cast a cloud of suspicion over the community.
“Originally a Trump-era initiative sold as a national security measure, the China Initiative instead turned out to be a witch hunt,” leaders from civil rights groups Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, Stop AAPI Hate, and the Asian American Scholar Forum said in a joint statement.
The groups added that the initiative devastated families and impeded the United States’ ability to retain and attract academic talent.
The congressman who introduced the bill, Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, told NBC News that “23 Democrats joined me in standing up for Chinese Americans who have too long been the victim of CCP predatory practices.”
“Groups that are against this bipartisan bill should be ashamed of themselves for their racist antics that mislead and scare Asian Americans,” he said.
The legislation was passed amid “China Week,” during which the House approved some two dozen mostly Republican-led bills aimed at addressing “military, economic, ideological, and technological threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party,” according to the
Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. “China Week,” newly introduced to the House, comes after Speaker Mike Johnson said in July that his goal was to present “a significant package of China-related legislation signed into law by the end of this year.”
Under the China Initiative, which was first implemented by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2018, several Asian American academics and scientists were falsely accused of spying.
One such scientist, MIT professor Gang Chen, was arrested in January 2021 after the government alleged that he had concealed affiliations with several Chinese entities and encouraged students to apply for positions in China, among several other accusations. Charges were dismissed a year later.
At a Tuesday news conference on the topic at the U.S. Capitol, Chen urged lawmakers to stop attempts to relaunch the program.
“I am still often woken up by my wife’s cries in her dreams as she remembers the police shouting beside her bed that morning I was arrested,” Chen said at the news conference. “I no longer seek government funding. I have completely stopped my previous research.”
Nanotechnology expert Anming Hu of the University of Tennessee — who was similarly arrested in February 2020 before charges were abruptly dropped in what has become known as the first case under the China Initiative — also spoke out against the initiative’s potential reinstatement.
“Before my arrest, I had hoped to become a U.S. citizen and was awaiting a green card. I loved my job as a university professor, where I could share my knowledge with students and pursue my research,” Hu said. “Within hours of my arrest, I lost the career I had worked my entire life to build.”
He added that “we will be stronger as a nation if we learn from these cases and ensure that this does not happen to anyone ever again.”
Additionally, since the bill’s passage, the White House has condemned the China Initiative’s potential revival.
“The bill also could give rise to incorrect and harmful public perceptions that DOJ applies a different standard to investigate and prosecute criminal conduct related to the Chinese people or to American citizens of Chinese descent,” the Biden administration said in a statement.
Ultimately, of the 12 cases brought under the initiative involving academic or grant-making institutions, four have ended in guilty pleas or convictions, according to Department of Justice statistics.
Asian American advocacy groups have long been warning of the security program’s “chilling” effects. A 2021 white paper by the nonprofit Committee of 100 showed that more than 50% of scientists of Chinese descent in the U.S. “feel considerable fear and/or anxiety” that they are under government surveillance.
And in a 2022 speech at George Mason University, Matthew Olsen, then-head of the National Security Division at the DOJ, addressed concerns around the program’s potential for discrimination, racial profiling and its impact on the research community. He said that he “concluded that this initiative is not the right approach.”
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