“The other thing that always has to be remembered is that we never investigate or prosecute based on ethnic identity or on what country a person is from.” “We need to protect the country against this, and we will, and we are making cases in that regard,” Garland told the Senate. Garland was asked about the China Initiative in October, and he called the CCP a "serious threat" in relation to intellectual property, espionage, cyberattacks, and ransomware. He pleaded guilty to one count of making a false statement to the FBI about the existence of patents for his inventions in China the day after the Chen case was dropped. government, including $500,000 from NASA, was arrested in 2020 for working as the director of the school’s High Density Electronics Center while allegedly being a secret participant in China’s Thousand Talents Program. Simon Saw-Teong Ang, a former University of Arkansas-Fayetteville professor who had received millions of dollars in grant research money from the U.S. A DOJ spokesman said that move also was "in the interest of justice." In a similar reversal, the DOJ dropped a half-dozen cases against Chinese military researchers in July after it had accused them of lying on their visas. Department of Energy.” The Justice Department filed a dismissal “in the interests of justice.” Chen was arrested a year ago and charged with wire fraud, failing to file a foreign bank account report, and making a false statement in a tax return in connection with undisclosed contracts from "various entities in the People’s Republic of China to the U.S. government funding, in what was seen as a big win for the initiative.īut the Justice Department also dropped a sizable case against Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Gang Chen in January after it had accused him of hiding millions of dollars in contracts with China while he was getting paid to do research for the U.S.
The China Initiative, started by the Trump DOJ in 2018, attempted to shine a light on the CCP’s coordinated and multifaceted efforts to steal research and technology from the United States, with a particular focus on rooting out academics who concealed their ties to China.ĭespite setbacks in some cases, numerous people have been convicted through the China Initiative, including Harvard professor Charles Lieber, who was found guilty in December of all federal charges related to concealing his ties to a Chinese university and the Chinese government's Thousand Talents Program while receiving U.S. Olsen, who recently announced the creation of a new domestic terrorism unit, began a review of the China Initiative in November and announced the results of his review during a speech at George Mason University's National Security Institute. The about-face comes after many Republicans had already accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of softening the enforcement of the initiative, which is part of the department’s National Security Division.
But he said the "mere perception" of those possibilities undermined the program.
Olsen said he never saw any indication that any enforcement decision the DOJ made was based on bias. PRO-CHINA GROUP ADVISED BY KEY BIDEN PICKS COMPARED DOJ’S CHINA INITIATIVE TO 'McCARTHYISM’ "By grouping cases under the China Initiative rubric, we helped give rise to a harmful perception that the Department of Justice applies a lower standard to investigate and prosecute criminal conduct related to that country or that we in some way view people with racial, ethnic, or familial ties to China differently," he said.
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