China Initiative

The China Initiative was a program by the United States Department of Justice to combat economic espionage and intellectual property theft linked to China in American research and industry. Launched in November 2018, the program targeted hundreds of prominent Chinese-American academics and scientists, of whom an estimated 250 lost their jobs. Many more had their careers negatively impacted and the prosecutions also contributed to at least one suicide.

Critics argued that the prosecutions contributed to a rise in incidents of violence against Asian Americans from 2019 to 2020 and have been criticized as racially biased and ineffective. In one case, an FBI agent admitted in court to falsely accusing a Chinese-born professor of espionage. The Department of Justice claimed to have ended the program on February 23, 2022, mostly as a result of accusations that the China Initiative was racially profiling Chinese American citizens and other residents of Chinese origin or ancestry, however, there have been calls by the US government to revive the program. The initiative resulted in a large exodus of influential Chinese-American scientists, many of whom decided to move to China.