In recent years, the US government has focused its attention on Chinese espionage. Here is one example:
Chen was arrested in 2014 and charged with espionage by the FBI, which alleged that she illegally accessed a government database to share sensitive information about American dams with Chinese scientists. Further investigation revealed that what Chen had actually done was use a shared password, widely known within her office, to access a database for her work. The lack of evidence led the Justice Department to drop its charges five months after filing them. Still, Chen was fired from her job—for the same now-discredited reasons that led to the FBI charges.
In 2018, the US government announced the China Initiative, aimed against Chinese spying in the US. The program was a product of the deep suspicion regarding the loyalty of ethnic Chinese people residing in the US. Here’s Politico:
At one point during the dinner, Trump noted of an unnamed country that the attendee said was clearly China, “almost every student that comes over to this country is a spy.”
(I wonder if that includes my wife?)
The FBI program targeted ethnic Chinese residents, gradually drifting away from its original goal of national security. It’s hard to get accurate information on the program, as the federal government appears to be engaged in covering up the fact that it targeted Chinese researchers for very minor technical violations, and many of the cases were thrown out:
Two days after MIT Technology Review requested comment from the DOJ regarding the initiative, the department made significant changes to its own list of cases, adding some and deleting 39 defendants previously connected to the China Initiative from its website. This included several instances where the government had announced prosecutions with great fanfare, only for the cases to fail—including one that was dismissed by a judge after a mistrial.
Rather than improving US national security, it has probably hurt our security by discouraging highly talented researchers from migrating from China to the US.
Fortunately, there are signs the government may be pulling back a bit:
The faulty information came from the Commerce Department’s Investigations and Threat Management Service (ITMS), an internal security unit that a July 2021 Senate investigation found had engaged in broad patterns of unfounded, discriminatory investigations aimed at Chinese-American and other employees—and which named Chen’s case as an example of misconduct. ITMS was disbanded shortly after the report was published.
The Biden Administration ended the program in February. And Sherry Chen is finally receiving justice:
Chen’s settlement—$550,000 up front, followed by $1.25 million to be paid out over the next 10 years—is the culmination of those efforts. In addition to the monetary damages, Chen’s lawyers say that the Commerce Department will also host a private meeting with the scientist and provide a letter acknowledging her record and accomplishments as a government hydrologist.
Unfortunately, anti-Chinese bigotry is still a part of our political system. Top politicians routinely mock Chinese names in a way that would be unthinkable if aimed against other ethnic groups (here and here and here and here). A Senate committee is engaged in a witch hunt aimed at showing that Covid-19 escaped from a Chinese lab, even going to the point of using false evidence. Our top universities have informal quotas limiting the admission of Asian-American students. If these quotas were applied to any other minority group, there would be outrage.
READER COMMENTS
MarkW
Nov 20 2022 at 6:20am
The discrimination against Asians (including Chinese) is outrageous, and hopefully the USSC will put an end to it. The same goes for persecuting innocent scientists (or non-scientists) for Chinese connections or ancestry. And I do have skin in this game–one of my kids’ long-term partners is a mixed Chinese-American dual citizen who spend much of her childhood in Shanghai living with relatives (who remain there). But if she has experienced significant discrimination, I have not yet heard about it, and her career success so far suggests otherwise.
On the other hand, we do know that R&D and commercial espionage at the behest of the Chinese government and corporations is real. And Beijing does have ways of intimidating and compelling cooperation from ethnic Chinese persons in America. It seems that if you are of Chinese origin and still have relatives in China that you care about, you are vulnerable.
Of course we need to guard against bigotry and discrimination while also remaining vigilant against espionage from an unfriendly government in Beijing.
Capt. J Parker
Nov 21 2022 at 11:15am
Covid 19 origin remains unknown. The Senate committee concluded only that it was more likely than not that Covid came from a lab leak. The ProPublica/Vanity Fare piece is far from any kind demonstration that the Senate Committee used false information. It demonstrates only that different experts can draw different conclusions from scant bits of information. The information being scant because of non-cooperation and records destruction by Chinese authorities.
I have no doubt that the Senate Committee had a geopolitical motivations. China is a geopolitical rival and one with a dictatorial government that has little regard for rights and freedoms valued by the US.
Scott Sumner
Nov 21 2022 at 12:15pm
Capt, I don’t think you are well informed on this issue. The Vanity Fair piece supported the Senate report, and was equally misleading.
“Covid 19 origin remains unknown.”
That’s no defense for what the Senate committee did.
“China is a geopolitical rival and one with a dictatorial government that has little regard for rights and freedoms valued by the US.”
So perhaps we should avoid adopting their techniques, such as employing false political propaganda? Or do two wrongs make a right?
Capt. J Parker
Nov 21 2022 at 2:47pm
I found the ProPublica/Vanity Fare Piece skeptical of many of the Senate Committee’s conclusions but not to the point of stating the report was false. I found Dr. Qiu’s Twitter analysis critical of the report and the ProPublica piece unconvincing because she would have us believe that indications of safety concerns at WIV were not true. Yet the mainstream media in the US and elsewhere has been reporting about such issues for as long as it has been acceptable in polite company to discuss the possibility of a lab leak origin of Covid 19. I have not seen that such reports have been retracted.
So, it seems to me that “what the Senate Committee did” does not in any way approach the employment of false political propaganda.
Scott Sumner
Nov 21 2022 at 5:36pm
I had a Chinese speaker I know and trust look at Dr. Qui’s translations, and she confirm they were correct and that the ProPublica translations that the Senate report relied on were inaccurate. I am very confident in that claim.
Almost all of the claims made by lab leak proponents were eventually shown to be false or misleading. This is simply politics (both on the US and the China side.)
Capt. J Parker
Nov 22 2022 at 12:03am
I never questioned Dr. Qiu’s statements regarding the correct translations. What I find unconvincing is her opinion that the errors she points out, in sum, discredit the Senate report or ProPublica article. I find it extremely unlikely that “almost all” of the claims made by the lab leak proponents have been shown to be false or misleading. Both the lab leak theory and the zoonotic origin theory rest only on circumstantial evidence and this is because of the total lack of transparency and cooperation by Chinese officials. Circumstantial evidence may be waved off as not proving the theory but that does not mean the evidence itself has been shown to be false.
Johnson85
Nov 22 2022 at 5:11pm
“Unfortunately, anti-Chinese bigotry is still a part of our political system…Our top universities have informal quotas limiting the admission of Asian-American students. If these quotas were applied to any other minority group, there would be outrage.”
This is somewhat of a quibble since it’s sort of a throw away line at the end of the post, but I think you are conflating two different things. As your last sentence acknowledges, Asian-Americans are discriminated against, and somehow it is more or less politically and socially costless to do so. I’m not entirely clear why that is. I think part of it is may be that people that think of other people as members of groups rather than individuals put them in a group with white people because they are successful as a group. Any prejudice or discrimination against an Asian individual somehow doesn’t “count” because “their group” is doing fine. Honestly their position seems so obviously immoral that it makes me worry that I am just not understanding their position, but it really does seem like their position is, “yes, some individual asians are discriminated against in admissions, but as a group they’re doing fine and it’s ok to discriminate against asian individuals, especially if it’s in favor of members of a group that is not doing well, such as african americans.”
I’m not sure how prevalent it is, but there is also apparently some animosity towards asian americans for somehow upsetting the narrative of American oppressiveness. Had a pretty leftist professor with this position. He would engage white conservatives in reasonably respectful arguments over policy, but would get visibly angry when the one asian american student made any conservat’ish or libertarian’ish arguments. Even said she wasn’t a real minority one time, which in his mind somehow invalidated her opinions, even though her parents were immigrants and she was the first american born member of her family.
But regardless, the discrimination against asian americans in things like school admission is I believe mostly separate and distinct from specifically anti-Chinese prejudice. The anti-chinses prejudice seems to largely be similar to the anti-Russian prejudice that existed ruing the cold war (and after the invasion of Ukraine and hell, even to an extent after Hillary lost). China really is a geopolitical adversary if not an explicit enemy, and they do invest resources in spying and do things that are contrary to the interests of the US. “Deport and/or prosecute chinese immigrants that are spies, and treat chinese immigrants that are not spies as valued coworkers, friends, and neighbors” is I guess the ideal rule, but that’s not a possible one to actually implement. In reality, for whatever level of concern or precaution you take against Chinese spying, you are going to miss some actual spies and at the very least inconvenience some non-spies. And of course since the incentives aren’t great, we end up both missing a lot of spies and persecuting a lot of innocents. And more ignorant positions that do extend prejudice against Chinese to Japanese or Korean or whatever non-Chinese immigrants just like anti-russian sentiment was extended to non-russian Slavik groups.
And there is some prejudice that does not arise out of geopolitical concerns per se but out of anti globalization positions and a feeling that China “took” “our jobs.” Don’t think this really has to do with it being China, but has just evolved into being China specific because it has been so successful in attracting foreign investment and constructing new factories and other industrial capacity.
All that to say, the anti-asian bigotry and anti-china prejudice seem to be distinguishable, one being just a racism issue I think and one being more like statistical discrimination maybe amped up by racism or xenophobia. If you could magically address the moral failings that cause the discrimination against asian americans in school admissions, I think that would also help reduce anti-Chinese prejudice, but I don’t think it would eliminate it.
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