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US Prejudice About Chinese Spying Is Incompatible With Science


I used to born a decade later, do I still aspire to come to the United States to become a scientist? Over the past few years, I’ve asked myself this question countless times and got no answer. As a kid in China in the 1990s, I found the beautiful country across the Pacific where I wanted to go, and I learned that a career in science would take me there. . When I went to Chicago in 2009 to get my doctorate in physics, it was a dream come true. But as tensions rise between my country of birth and my adoptive home, the dream is now in doubt. Being a foreign scientist in the US – and especially in China – has been seen as a security risk.

In the fall of 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a “China Initiative” to combat economic espionage, focusing on academia. Any connection with China, whether personal or professional, is considered a potential conduit for intellectual property theft. The heavy-handed approach has since backfired. A series of high-profile cases ended in acquittal or lay off. Few spy is caught. The investigate disproportionately targeted scientists of Chinese descent, and accused by academic associations and civil rights groups as a record of racism.

This week, the Department of Justice announced terminated the China Initiative, concluding that the controversial program was “not the right approach” and addressing the multitude of “national security threats” posed by the Chinese government and its opponents. another foreign player put it, “requiring a broader approach”. Andrew Lelling, former United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts and one of the leading prosecutors on the China Initiative, also admit that although the initiative had “lost focus” and made some mistakes, it had “created an atmosphere of fear among researchers” and “general deterrence” as a goal “has achieved after many times”.

The focus of the current policy debate is on the means; The last part is still unexplored. Everyone agrees that the absorption of foreign ideas and personnel poses a real threat to American science. People also seem to believe that American leadership in science is essential, and one way to maintain that is to attract foreign talent, people like me.

The adjectives intrigued me. Foreign versus American, while I am both and neither. It is surprising that the language and therefore the logic of state are accepted as an axiom. When I left China for the US, the decision was personal. It is not to Beijing’s detriment or to Washington’s interest. That is to say, either government is entitled to my presence and my labor. I refuse to give in to my values ​​in this way. I try to picture myself 19 years old today in China, watching borders closed due to the pandemic and visa restrictions, swallowing fragments of a shattered dream. Even in this imaginary scenario, the pain is unbearable. But that pain, is also personal. To regard private stinginess as an injury to national competitiveness is to trivialize its importance, devaluing a person relative to his or her usefulness to the state.

What does it mean for a government to claim a piece of knowledge and the people who produce it? Border fixation and national loyalty requirements obscure more fundamental questions about research ethics and social responsibility. When state power is seen as the norm and default in scientific management, the implications are not only for where research is done or by whom. National interest priorities shape the purpose and content of the investigation: what questions are asked, who benefits from the answers, and at what costs. To the drums of great power rivalry, a dark cloud of nationalism looms over the future of science.



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