"China Initiative" Webinar Series
Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, APA Justice Task Force, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, and United Chinese Americans are partnering to produce a series of webinars to raise awareness of a growing number of federal investigations and prosecutions targeting Chinese Americans, Chinese immigrants, and Chinese nationals in the U.S. particularly scientists and researchers under the umbrella of the “China Initiative.” The webinar series examines the ramifications of the "China Initiative" on the civil rights and security of Chinese Americans, Chinese immigrants, and Chinese Nationals working in the U.S., as well as the consequences for the broader American society.
Background:
From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 through the Cold War, racist and xenophobic tropes painting Chinese and Asian Americans as “perpetual foreigners” and threats to public health and national security influenced U.S. government policy. Today is no different. Through rhetoric, rapidly changing policies, and targeted prosecutions, Chinese American scientists and researchers are again caught in a pattern of suspicion and racial discrimination that has harmed Chinese and other Asian communities in the United States for more than 150 years. While the PRC government unquestionably engages in malign behaviors within its borders and in the international arena, which the U.S. government properly condemns, the Trump administration’s rhetoric and actions blur the distinction between the PRC government and individuals of Chinese nationality or ancestry. As in the past, when potential threats arise from abroad, the U.S. national security establishment too often responds by treating entire classes of people defined by their race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin as suspect communities.
As U.S.-PRC tensions have grown over recent years, we have seen increasingly aggressive and misguided investigations of Chinese American scientists resulting in sensationalized charges that allege an intended subversion of U.S. interests. While the Justice Department’s abandonment of several of these prosecutions before trial has meant falsely accused scientists experience fewer financial and emotional costs than they would from a full trial, it also deprives them of a public exoneration and an exposure of the racist assumptions underlying these investigations.
Rather than recognize the biases that drove these failed national security investigations, the Justice Department in 2018 initiated an even more assertive strategy, announcing a department-wide “China Initiative.” The Justice Department says its goal is to prioritize trade theft cases that benefit the PRC, but its rhetoric has often conflated the actions of individuals into a global conspiracy. Its prosecutions have further sought to amplify administrative oversights into federal crimes of fraud and false statements. Moreover, despite the China Initiative’s alleged goal of combating economic espionage, the DOJ’s own report on the China Initiative shows that many of the actual charges are not intellectual property theft or economic espionage. Instead, many of the charges are for minor or unrelated offenses including wire fraud, filing false tax returns, and even matters that had previously been handled administratively such as alleged inaccuracies in university conflicts of interest forms.
When the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, spread into a global pandemic, it opened another vector for the current administration to fuel anti-Chinese bias. High government officials repeatedly called COVID-19 the “China Virus,” as anti-Asian hate crimes spiked across the U.S. Once again, spurious public health and national security fears are driving anti-Asian discrimination.
The webinars will include speakers from Chinese American and Asian American advocacy organizations, civil rights groups, academia, as well as experts from scientific and legal communities. The speakers will explore the burden this pattern of investigations inflicts on targeted individuals and communities as well as consequences for the broader American society.
From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 through the Cold War, racist and xenophobic tropes painting Chinese and Asian Americans as “perpetual foreigners” and threats to public health and national security influenced U.S. government policy. Today is no different. Through rhetoric, rapidly changing policies, and targeted prosecutions, Chinese American scientists and researchers are again caught in a pattern of suspicion and racial discrimination that has harmed Chinese and other Asian communities in the United States for more than 150 years. While the PRC government unquestionably engages in malign behaviors within its borders and in the international arena, which the U.S. government properly condemns, the Trump administration’s rhetoric and actions blur the distinction between the PRC government and individuals of Chinese nationality or ancestry. As in the past, when potential threats arise from abroad, the U.S. national security establishment too often responds by treating entire classes of people defined by their race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin as suspect communities.
As U.S.-PRC tensions have grown over recent years, we have seen increasingly aggressive and misguided investigations of Chinese American scientists resulting in sensationalized charges that allege an intended subversion of U.S. interests. While the Justice Department’s abandonment of several of these prosecutions before trial has meant falsely accused scientists experience fewer financial and emotional costs than they would from a full trial, it also deprives them of a public exoneration and an exposure of the racist assumptions underlying these investigations.
Rather than recognize the biases that drove these failed national security investigations, the Justice Department in 2018 initiated an even more assertive strategy, announcing a department-wide “China Initiative.” The Justice Department says its goal is to prioritize trade theft cases that benefit the PRC, but its rhetoric has often conflated the actions of individuals into a global conspiracy. Its prosecutions have further sought to amplify administrative oversights into federal crimes of fraud and false statements. Moreover, despite the China Initiative’s alleged goal of combating economic espionage, the DOJ’s own report on the China Initiative shows that many of the actual charges are not intellectual property theft or economic espionage. Instead, many of the charges are for minor or unrelated offenses including wire fraud, filing false tax returns, and even matters that had previously been handled administratively such as alleged inaccuracies in university conflicts of interest forms.
When the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, spread into a global pandemic, it opened another vector for the current administration to fuel anti-Chinese bias. High government officials repeatedly called COVID-19 the “China Virus,” as anti-Asian hate crimes spiked across the U.S. Once again, spurious public health and national security fears are driving anti-Asian discrimination.
The webinars will include speakers from Chinese American and Asian American advocacy organizations, civil rights groups, academia, as well as experts from scientific and legal communities. The speakers will explore the burden this pattern of investigations inflicts on targeted individuals and communities as well as consequences for the broader American society.
Partners of the Webinar Series
Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC advocates for an America in which all Americans can benefit equally from, and contribute to, the American dream. Our mission is to advance the civil and human rights for Asian Americans and to build and promote a fair and equitable society for all. Advancing Justice | AAJC is a national 501 (c)(3) nonprofit founded in 1991 in Washington, D.C.
APA Justice Task Force is a non-partisan platform to build a sustainable ecosystem to address racial profiling issues and to facilitate, inform, and advocate on selected issues related to justice and fairness for the Asian American community.
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to reform, revitalize – and when necessary, defend – our country's systems of democracy and justice.