Weeks after news that the Department of Justice’s four-year-old “China Initiative” would be dissolved, some experts now warn the program that largely targeted Chinese immigrants and visiting academics could be revived as easily as it was killed–and that its influence lingers on.

“The pendulum could swing back the other way on that,” Mitch Ambrose, who heads science policy newsletters and tracking resources at the American Institute of Physics, told the Sampan. “There’s clearly interest among certain Republicans in bringing back that framework. The China Initiative could very well come back.”

Indeed, just last month, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a top-ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, reportedly called on the Biden administration to restore the China Initiative and warned about the threat that China poses to U.S. national security. Rubio also penned letters to the presidents of 26 Florida research colleges and universities, asking them to be “on guard against efforts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to use research collaboration and education exchange with American academic institutions to advance their malign agenda.”

Other Republican lawmakers have also called for bringing back the program, too.

Launched in 2018 during the Trump Administration and under the direction of then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the initiative was purportedly implemented to defend the United States against intellectual property theft conducted by the Chinese government. But it has been criticized for unfairly targeting Chinese scientists in the U.S.—including some who have lived in America for decades. Its prosecution of alleged grant fraud–of which some high-profile cases were dropped–also drew criticism.

The program is a “perfect example of racial profiling,” Xiaoxing Xi, a physics professor at Temple University, told the Sampan during a recent interview. Xi, who has lived in the U.S. for more than a quarter of a century, was indicted on federal criminal charges in 2015 and accused of sharing restricted American technology with China. The charges, made prior to the China Initiative, were eventually dropped. But Xi says they upended his life, and he has since spoken out against the program. “It’s not like life will be back to before … The so-called normal is never the same.”

The start of the initiative was ushered in with some fanfare, with Sessions announcing in a speech in November of 2018 that the initiative would identify Chinese trade theft, dedicate resources to combat it, and prosecute the crimes quickly.

“Today, we see Chinese espionage not just taking place against traditional targets like our defense and intelligence agencies, but against targets like research labs and universities, and we see Chinese propaganda disseminated on our campuses,” said Sessions at the time.

Several press releases were issued by the Department of Justice about the initiative and updates on it and its cases.
But, so far, the program’s ostensible end has left a sparse public paper trail on the DOJ’s media relations page, with no DOJ press release to date. In fact, word of the end came from Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen’s announcement in a speech on February 23. The DOJ did not respond to requests for comment.

Olsen acknowledged that the name of the program could be perceived by Asian Americans and others as evidence “that the Justice Department treats people from China or of Chinese descent differently,” but at the same time he contended that he “never saw any indication, none, that any decision that the Justice Department made was based on bias or prejudice of any kind,” according to a New York Times account of the speech.

But concerns about future prosecutions and racial profiling linger.

Despite the proclaimed end of the program, Ambrose at the American Institute of Physics, said it’s unclear whether the end is even permanent.

The American Physical Society (APS) is “quite concerned about the impact that this initiative has been having on the science community,” said Ambrose. He noted a recent APS survey about scientists’ perceptions of the China Initiative that showed troubling results: Nearly one in five of physicists surveyed have withdrawn from professional opportunities in collaboration with foreign colleagues ,and 43% of international physicists who are in graduate school or the early stages of their career in the U.S. perceive the nation as an unwelcoming environment for international students and academics.

Indeed, the Justice Department said it intends to continue its efforts to target the actions of the Chinese government, and actions that it believes to be espionage and pose security threats. It will also continue to prosecute the program’s remaining cases. This has left some unease among its critics.

“These issues and dynamics are historically-rooted but never resolved,” said Peter Kiang, director of Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston of what he described as “framing Chinese and other Asian groups as enemies of the U.S. in manipulative, politically opportunistic ways.”

“It shouldn’t be so deep or so easy, but here we are, once again,” Kiang told the Sampan, “The China Initiative. COVID-19 China virus. Pandemic anti-Asian hate. No learning from history. Ever.”

Gisela Kusakawa, assistant director of the Anti-Asian Racial Profiling Project at Asian Americans Advancing Justice, pointed to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 as a similar example of “a long pattern of treating people of Chinese descent, not only as national security, but also as economic security risks.”

The effects of these programs, Kusakawa told the Sampan, are felt beyond the Chinese American community and have “huge ramifications for the whole pan-Asian American community…. We believe that the post-China Initiative world is certainly much better than the pre-China Initiative [world], but racial profiling did not start and will not end with the China Initiative.”

SAMPAN, published by the nonprofit Asian American Civic Association, is the only bilingual Chinese-English newspaper in New England, acting as a bridge between Asian American community organizations and individuals in the Greater Boston area. It is published biweekly and distributed free-of-charge throughout metro Boston; it is also delivered to as far away as Hawaii.