The China Initiative: Origins and Consequences

On September 9, 2021, federal judge Thomas A. Varlan acquitted former University of Tennessee professor Dr. Anming Hu of all charges related to a Department of Justice investigation that alleged that Hu committed wire fraud and made false statements about his alleged Chinese government research ties. On November 5, 2021, a federal jury convicted Yanjun Xu, a Chinese national and an official in the Chinese Ministry of State Security, of attempted economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. The differing outcomes of these two cases involve a common thread: the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, an investigative program launched in 2018 to deter and disrupt alleged or actual Chinese government espionage or intellectual property (IP) theft targeting U.S. researchers, universities, and businesses. These two cases raise key questions. How extensive is Chinese government espionage and IP theft targeting the United States? Is the China Initiative a form of racial or ethnic profiling? How has the China Initiative impacted U.S.-Chinese information and technology exchanges and cooperation? How has the U.S. academic community responded to these events? Join us as our expert panel explores all these issues.

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