Tracking paranoid rhetoric, visa restrictions, and the targeted policing of China-connected research, which combine to create a hostile atmosphere for Chinese people in the U.S.
“Faculty members, post-docs, research staff and students tell me that, in their dealings with government agencies, they now feel unfairly scrutinized, stigmatized and on edge – because of their Chinese ethnicity alone.”
—MIT President L. Rafael Reif, June 25, 2019.
Since early 2018, the American immigration and justice system has appeared to target Chinese students, and ethnically Chinese researchers, with paranoid rhetoric, visa restrictions, and targeted policing and politicization of China-connected research. Together, these three trends comprise the primary — but not only — components of the current atmosphere of suspicion and distrust in America of not just Beijing, but Chinese people as a whole.
This tool tracks rising Sinophobia in the U.S. Click on the filters to view different categories of Sinophobia-related developments, including Responses to Sinophobia, like the letter by the MIT President cited above.
Read about why The China Project launched this Sinophobia Tracker, in the words of our Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Goldkorn.
In 2021, the United States lost published research scientists to other countries, while China gained more than 2,408 scientific authors. This was a remarkable turnaround from as recently as 2017 when the United States picked up 4,292 scientists and China picked up just 116. As Figure 1 shows, the rest of the OECD and China have both surpassed the United States for net inflow of scientific authors.
Over a third of Chinese-origin scientists in the US do not feel welcome in the country, and close to three-quarters do not feel safe as academic researchers, a survey published in a renowned international science journal has revealed.
Facing an increasingly suspicious research climate, a growing number of Chinese scientists are leaving the United States for positions abroad, the latest indicator of how worsening U.S.-China relations are complicating academic collaboration and could hamstring Washington’s tech ambitions.
Launched during the Trump administration to curb Chinese state-backed espionage and efforts aimed at stealing US intellectual property, the China Initiative was terminated in February of last year following criticism that it was tantamount to racial profiling and damaging to the US’s scientific enterprise. The cancellation of the US DOJ programme came after many of the criminal cases the US government brought against academic researchers under the initiative were dismissed.
Feeling the pressure of potential federal investigations since the 2018 launch of the China Initiative, scientists of Chinese descent in the United States now face higher incentives to leave the United States and lower incentives to apply for federal grants. We find a steady increase in the return migration of scientists of Chinese descent from the United States to China. Results reveal general feelings of fear and anxiety that lead them to consider leaving the United States and/or stop applying for federal grants. If the situation is not corrected, American science will likely suffer the loss of scientific talent to China and other countries.
We also conducted a survey of scientists of Chinese descent employed by US universities in tenured or tenure- track positions, with results revealing general feelings of fear and anxiety that lead them to consider leaving the United States and/or stop applying for federal grants. If the situation is not corrected, American science will likely suffer the loss of scientific talent to China and other countries.
"In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Chen said he believed law-enforcement officials had miscalculated in bringing his case and some similar ones, in part because they are unfamiliar with how scientists work."
"After the experience of the last year — the early-morning arrest, the handcuffs and shackles, being described, in a news conference, as loyal to China — [Gang Chen] is uncertain if he will ever feel safe applying for U.S. government funds for research again."
An op-ed by Chén Gāng 陈刚, the MIT professor whom the U.S. Department of Justice dropped all charges against, a year after accusing him of failing to disclose ties to China. In his opinion piece, Chen describes his time under investigation as “a living hell,” calls the China Initiative “terribly misguided,” and says that there were “critical mistakes on the part of the FBI, federal prosecutors, and other federal investigative agencies” that need to be reviewed “by Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice to hold individuals accountable for this glaring misconduct.”
