In late 2021, a US court condemned one of the country’s top scientists in the field of nanoscience for lying about academic and financial ties to China.
Charles Lieber, 62, faces up to 26 years in prison on six counts: two of lying to the government and four of tax evasion — the sentencing date has not been set, and the scientist is now on leave. paid as director of the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University, she is in the final stage of incurable lymphoma.
It’s an extraordinary episode of sinking into disgrace for a celebrated academic, but only one of dozens of cases investigated by the US Department of Justice in recent years in what has come to be known as the China Initiative.
American concern over the theft of industrial secrets and the Chinese government’s effort to recruit spies is not new, but in 2018 the government of then-President Donald Trump implemented a kind of scavenger hunt to force academics raising federal government research funds to reveal links with Chinese institutions.
The majority of those indicted so far are ethnic Chinese — naturalized or immigrant citizens — which has drawn comparisons with the anti-communist Cold War crusade of the 1950s.
Lieber’s case had been seen as a test of the strength of the Justice Department’s allegations after more than 2,000 academics denounced a climate of racial discrimination and intimidation to Attorney General Merrick Garland, calling for an end to the Initiative.
The scheme’s architect, former prosecutor Andrew Lelling, now in the private sector, tells the leaf that there was never racial motivation in the investigations. “Several academics did not understand the need for transparency before. We reinforce that point.”
Lelling says he believes the bill will still undergo changes in the government of Democrat Joe Biden, but points out that Trump was only the first president to take concrete steps in this field — and that his successor has been equally, if not more, aggressive.
But what about scientists whose finances and careers have been destroyed? Over the past year, the Department of Justice has dropped seven such cases. In September, a researcher at the University of Tennessee was acquitted of all charges brought by the government, in a lawsuit one of the jurors called ridiculous.
Anming Hu, who holds a nanotechnology chair at the institution, was followed for two years by FBI agents (the US federal police) and accused of lying to NASA, the country’s space agency, about his work with the Chinese. The university began cooperating with the government when it was informed that the professor would be an agent of the Chinese government and fired him.
Phil Lomonaco, a lawyer for the Canadian-born Chinese researcher, told leaf that the client will regain the chair and legal status that he had lost in immigration because of the action.
While not willing to comment on specific cases, Andrew Lelling believes Hu’s investigation was flawed and says he is convinced that most of the China Initiative’s allegations were fair.
Feng “Franklin” Tao’s lawyer, another prominent scientist indicted, refutes these conclusions. “This is the comment of someone who doesn’t know in depth the situation of the affected teachers”, says Peter Zeindenberg. “Sinus Americans in the sciences are living in a constant state of fear and many simply choose to return to China because of the climate of hostility.”
The Chinese chemical engineer at the University of Kansas is a legal US resident and was indicted for allegedly not revealing ties to a Chinese institution. His trial is set for March, and he is indebted because of costs involving his defense — which he tries to fund in a virtual kitty. If convicted, he could face a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
While denying that the price paid by individuals was too high, former prosecutor Lelling sees merit in complaints of intimidation of academic cooperation. In addition to racial discrimination, which he flatly denies, he believes the China Initiative should not affect “valid and healthy” international scientific cooperation. “Nothing is gained by prosecuting individuals. The government needs to free up resources to guide academics and investigate the theft of corporate secrets.”
Consulted by the report, the Chinese embassy in Washington accused the American justice system of racial discrimination and of having planned a quota of cases even before collecting evidence. “It is a new version of the ‘white horror’ of McCarthyism,” a spokesman for the diplomatic representation said in an email. According to the organ, the government does not respect values ​​of “human rights and equality” that it “has always defended”,
Charles Lieber sued Harvard to have his defense upheld by the university and lost. The neighboring Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, is paying the lawyers of its nanotechnology professor Gang Chen. In the last week of Trump’s term, a year ago, then-prosecutor Andrew Lelling ordered Chen’s arrest and accused him of being loyal to his native country — the professor naturalized an American two decades ago.
MIT declined to comment on the case, claiming the process is ongoing. More than 200 professors at the institution’s five schools signed a letter of solidarity with Chen, accused of recommending students for research posts in Asia funded by the Chinese regime and defrauding the US taxpayer of grants worth $19 million — MIT claims that he did not directly receive this amount.
The field of nanoscience, commonly found in indictments, is especially sensitive. This is an area where, American institutions predict, China is in a position to surpass the US.
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