Tracking paranoid rhetoric, visa restrictions, and the targeted policing of China-connected research, which combine to create a hostile atmosphere for Chinese people in the U.S.
“Faculty members, post-docs, research staff and students tell me that, in their dealings with government agencies, they now feel unfairly scrutinized, stigmatized and on edge – because of their Chinese ethnicity alone.”
—MIT President L. Rafael Reif, June 25, 2019.
Since early 2018, the American immigration and justice system has appeared to target Chinese students, and ethnically Chinese researchers, with paranoid rhetoric, visa restrictions, and targeted policing and politicization of China-connected research. Together, these three trends comprise the primary — but not only — components of the current atmosphere of suspicion and distrust in America of not just Beijing, but Chinese people as a whole.
This tool tracks rising Sinophobia in the U.S. Click on the filters to view different categories of Sinophobia-related developments, including Responses to Sinophobia, like the letter by the MIT President cited above.
Read about why SupChina launched this Sinophobia Tracker, in the words of our Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Goldkorn.
"The 'China Initiative' launched in late 2018 aimed to prevent U.S. technology theft by China but has since 'deviated significantly from its claimed mission,' according to the Sept. 8 letter, which was signed by 177 Stanford faculty members and made public by them on Monday [September 13]."
A federal judge last week acquitted nanotechnology professor Hú Ānmíng 胡安明 of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, of all charges brought against him by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) as part of its China Initiative.
The “Judgment of Acquittal ON ALL COUNTS (following June’s deadlocked jury) is short and sweet,” notes scholar Margaret K. Lewis: “The court’s accompanying Memorandum Opinion and Order is a stinging rebuke of the government’s case and, more generally, a stain on the Justice Department’s China Initiative.”
The DOJ did not feel the sting, and said: “We respect the court’s decision, although we are disappointed with the result,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
See also our Sinophobia tracker for a recent history of U.S. government moves against ethnically Chinese scholars, scientists, and students, and a statement on Hu’s victory from advocacy group Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
"After Hu refused to work as a spy for the U.S. government, federal agents harassed him for more than two years."
Launched by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2018, the China Initiative is a government program gone rogue. Will it be shut down after the suspensions of half a dozen investigations ended without prosecution or any evidence of wrongdoing?
"As the National Institutes of Health begins implementing Trump-era guidelines, researchers voice concerns over transparency and racial profiling."
Senator Tom Cotton argues that because it is "often impossible to distinguish honest students from spies," there is an "inherent problem in allowing hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals to study advanced STEM in America." His solution is to presume all Chinese STEM students to be potential spies and totally ban them from graduate studies in the U.S.
Maggie Lewis, a Professor of Law at Seton Hall University, responds to the indictment of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Gang Chen, arguing that the case "underscores two major concerns with the [Department of Justice's] China Initiative: an over-emphasis on national security and an under-emphasis on bias."
Tianyu M. Fang reports for SupChina that Yáng Jiànlì 杨建利, a prominent Chinese human rights activist, has been denied U.S. citizenship because he used to be a Communist Party member in the 1980s until he joined in the 1989 Tiananmen protests. Fang concludes, "The lesson here, perhaps, is to recognize the layered complexities and deep contradictions in the politics of Chinese individuals rather than inciting lazy Sinophobia and loyalty tests."
SupChina interviews lawyers, academics, and scientists affected by the U.S. Justice Department's China Initiative for their perspective.
