Sun Kwok

Opinion | Creating a climate of fear for Chinese scientists in the US benefits neither Washington nor Beijing

Some scientists have been fired from US universities for their links with China’s Thousand Talents Plan. Are such moves justified?

The truth is that technical espionage isn’t necessary when you have enough knowledge to figure out so-called secrets yourself

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Why you can trust SCMP

Sun Kwok

Published: 3:00am, 20 Jun 2019Updated: 4:28am, 20 Jun 2019

In May, Emory University in Atlanta dismissed two Chinese-American neuroscientists, Li Xiaojiang and Li Shihua, for failing to disclose their research funding from China. In April, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre moved to dismiss three ethnic Chinese scientists for conflicts of interest (two chose to resign first). In January, ethnic Chinese cancer researcher Xifeng Wu resigned as director of MD Anderson’s Centre for Public Health and Translational Genomics.

These departures came after the US National Institutes of Health, in an August 2018 letter to institutions that receive grants from it, warned against the influence of “foreign entities”. According to the Houston Chronicle, 10 of MD Anderson’s senior researchers or administrators of Chinese descent have retired, resigned or been placed on administrative leave between late 2017 and early 2019.

The Chinese community in the US has charged that the departures amount to racial profiling of Americans of Chinese origin. It cites the example of hydrologist Sherry Chen, of the National Weather Service, who was accused in 2014 of using a stolen password to gain access to data, before the charges were dropped.

Physics professor Xiaoxing Xi of Temple University was arrested in 2015 for espionage, but the charges were also dropped. These cases have resulted in growing anxiety in the Chinese-American scientific community and created an atmosphere of mistrust of the US law enforcement authorities.

Is a witch hunt going on? In response to questions about the dismissals, MD Anderson president Peter Pisters said the investigations were “fundamentally about ethics and integrity”, not ethnicity. Is that true?

Hydrologist Sherry Chen and physics professor Xiaoxing Xi were accused of spying for China in 2014 and 2015 respectively, but both cases were dropped. Photo: AFP

Opinion | Creating a climate of fear for Chinese scientists in the US benefits neither Washington nor Beijing

Some scientists have been fired from US universities for their links with China’s Thousand Talents Plan. Are such moves justified? The truth is that technical espionage isn’t necessary when you have enough knowledge to figure out so-called secrets yourself

Some scientists have been fired from US universities for their links with China’s Thousand Talents Plan. Are such moves justified?

The truth is that technical espionage isn’t necessary when you have enough knowledge to figure out so-called secrets yourself