Anti-China probes back in public gaze

With Harvard scholar in the dock, flaws in 'China Initiative' return to scrutiny

As the trial of a Harvard professor charged with hiding his ties to a Chinese-run recruitment program got underway in Boston on Wednesday, academics say the outcome could have a big impact on the US government's controversial "China Initiative".

The trial of Charles Lieber, which began in a federal court in the northeastern city, follows a number of prosecutions waged under the Department of Justice program that have drawn criticism.

Launched in 2018 under the administration of then-president Donald Trump, the China Initiative has been lambasted for harming academic research and for the way it has overly targeted Chinese nationals, effectively subjecting them to racial profiling. It was introduced in response to so-called national security concerns.

The first trial of a researcher following the launch of the program ended in a mistrial and later an acquittal on Sept 9 of Anming Hu, formerly a tenured professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He lost his job after the US government accused him of hiding his links to a university in China.

On Wednesday, opening statements were heard in the trial of Lieber, 62, the former chair of Harvard University's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Jury selection was completed the day before.

Lieber was arrested on Jan 28,2020. Two days later, a federal judge approved his release on cash bail of $1 million. He has been accused of hiding his involvement in China's Thousand Talents Plan, a program designed to recruit talented people from overseas. He is charged with lying about his involvement in the program and failing to disclose income from China on his tax returns.

Lieber has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

A number of scientists have been calling for an end to the China Initiative, including about 40 of Lieber's colleagues, who wrote a letter in March asking the government to drop the charges against him.

Lieber, who is suffering from an incurable lymphoma, was described by the colleagues as the victim of an "unjust criminal prosecution". They said the cases were discouraging US scientists from collaborating with peers in other countries, particularly China.

"This is true, and it is unfortunate," Randy Katz, vice-chancellor for research and a professor in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, told China Daily on Wednesday. He said he signed a letter written by Stanford faculty members in September and supports the campaign to eliminate the China Initiative.

"In our scientific collaborations, we should seek partnership with intellectual leaders wherever they are in the world," Katz said. "Clearly, there are many outstanding scientists in China today. It will impede the advance of knowledge if American scientists are denied collaboration with these experts, be it due to regulation of who we can work with or through fear and intimidation."

Hundreds of faculty members at Stanford, Yale, UC Berkeley, Princeton, Temple and other prominent universities also have signed on to letters to US Attorney General Merrick Garland calling on him to end the China Initiative.

The academics say the effort compromises US competitiveness in research and technology and has had a chilling effect on recruiting foreign scholars. They also worry that there is racial profiling.

Jenny Lee, a professor and dean's fellow for the Internationalization Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona, said her study of about 2,000 scientists in the US shows that of those with Chinese descent, half of them reported fears they are being watched by the FBI.

"As a consequence of the China Initiative, both Chinese and non-Chinese scientists reported that they are abandoning collaboration with China, hosting fewer Chinese scholars, and reducing their collaboration to domestic teams," she told China Daily. "Those who are of Chinese descent also reported considerations of leaving the US and pursuing their careers elsewhere, including in China."

Lee said the outcome of Lieber's trial could have a big impact either way.

"If the decision is in Lieber's favor, this decision would follow the acquittal of Hu, which would raise more doubt about the effectiveness of the China Initiative," she said.

"If Lieber is found guilty, I worry that the China Initiative would not only continue but continue to confuse issues of disclosure with academic espionage－they are not the same. Charles Lieber is being charged on the former but being treated on the latter."

A high-profile researcher known for developing nanomaterials for medicine and biology, Lieber won the 2012 Wolf Prize in Chemistry and was listed as a potential Nobel Prize winner by Thomson Reuters in 2008.