Fueling 'China spy theory,' elites are also against the progressive trend in the US

By Ai Jun Published: Sep 14, 2021

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1234280.shtml

Admit it or not, Washington's hysterical containment of China is backfiring. It has been fueling the theory that every person of Chinese ethnicity is a potential spy, which spurs fears of a Chinese brain drain. Last week, 177 Stanford professors urged the US Justice Department to end a program looking for Chinese spies in academia, as they believe it is hurting US interests, Reuters reported on Tuesday. 

In a letter sent to the US Justice Department on September 8, the Stanford faculty members called for the end of the China Initiative, a Trump-era program aimed at preventing the so-called espionage and intellectual property theft from China. They claimed that most cases brought by the initiative are "unrelated to intellectual property theft or scientific/economic espionage" and "the chilling effect of the China Initiative is discouraging many scholars from coming to or staying in the US." 

Thanks to former US President Donald Trump's relentless efforts to demonize China, the Red Scare is still haunting the US. Some observers are even concerned whether the US will one day embark on the path of Nazification, as its major missions in recent years have been inciting hostility, finding scapegoats, choreographing fake accusations, manipulating public opinion, adopting imperialistic policies, and indulging the rise of racism.

This is not a concern only from the Chinese public opinion, but also from the US. In May 2020, former US ambassador to China Max Baucus said the US today is reminiscent of the McCarthy era and Hitler in 1930s Germany, which "rallied people up, making people believe things that were really not true."

The US is not just anxious about China, it is panicked. Believing China has become a rival just like the Soviet Union during the Cold War era, the US is so scared that it named the program directly after the name of China, Xu Liang, an associate professor at the School of International Relations at Beijing International Studies University, told the Global Times.

But the US has achieved nothing from the initiative. On Thursday, former University of Tennessee professor Hu Anming was acquitted of fraud charges after the espionage investigation against him fell apart, after being arrested in February 2020. Hu was the first to go on trial under the China Initiative. Two months earlier, the US Justice Department "dropped cases against five visiting researchers accused of hiding their affiliations with China's military," The Wall Street Journal reported on July 23.

The initiative is carried out purely based on assumptions and imagination. Those policymakers are psychologically abnormal, whose mindsets are still stuck in the 1960s and 1970s. They are unsatisfied with changes within the US as well as the US development, so they have found an exit for their hysteria - China, according to Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Shanghai-based Fudan University. 

Trump may want to copy McCarthyism by the China Initiative. But years later, Washington has neither found any solid case over espionage among Chinese scientists, nor fundamentally relaxed the US core concern on narrowing the gap of scientific research strength between the two countries. 

More importantly, the China Initiative has damaged the fundamental pillar to make the US strong and its science flourish - the attraction toward talent worldwide. The initiative is hurting the foundation of the country. When the US is striking fear in the scientific community, consolidating the trend that scientists can be wrongly accused and lose their career and livelihood at the snap of a finger, it shows "Washington elites are against not only China, but also a progressive trend in the US," Shen said. Worse, Trump created it, yet Biden does not have the nerve and strength to reverse the tide.

The US needs global talent, including those from China, for its cutting-edge technological development. If the China Initiative is further implemented and promoted, the US will only become more and more fragile, Xu noted. 

The recent Stanford University letter showed that at least 177 professors are still rational and vigilant toward the resurgence of McCarthyism. They see that the US is deviating from making America great again. As former US secretary of energy Steven Chu put it, the US was "the brain's win for half a century," but it is throwing it away.