Dismissed

From the LA Times: When the Trump administration in 2018 unveiled a sweeping crackdown on economic espionage by the Chinese government, advocacy groups and academics raised concerns the effort could result in racial profiling and have a chilling effect on collaborations. Then last week, federal prosecutors abruptly dropped charges against five Chinese researchers at U.S. universities accused of visa fraud, fueling fresh doubts about the China Initiative and bringing new calls for the Justice Department to end or revamp it. 

The dismissals of the cases, which targeted scientists at such universities as UCLA, UC Davis, UC San Francisco and Stanford, represent an embarrassing setback in the federal government’s effort to combat Chinese economic espionage, which authorities say costs the U.S. economy at least $600 billion a year.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) said Monday he was urging the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate “whether the China Initiative is putting undue pressure on DOJ officials to engage in inappropriate or illegal profiling.” Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) said in a statement that the administration’s decision to drop the charges “is more evidence that these investigations are rooted in racial profiling, not national security.”... Justice Department officials have defended the initiative, saying such investigations play a key role in addressing the espionage threat posed by China. Thousands of Chinese students and researchers in the U.S. are believed to be participating in Chinese government programs that incentivize and encourage them to transfer sensitive information back to China, according to Justice Department and intelligence officials. On Monday, officials said the dismissals did not represent a policy shift. They said that they dropped the five cases, which the agency trumpeted in multiple news releases, after providing defense lawyers a memo by an FBI analyst who questioned the value of targeting visa violators to identify and halt the illicit transfer of technology to China...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-07-26/feds-dropping-charges-against-chinese-scholars-reignites-concerns-over-bias.