FBI Director: Nearly half of all counterintelligence cases relate to China
"China's spying and attempts to steal U.S. technology are 'the greatest long-term threat' to America's economic vitality, Wray said."
United States Sinophobia Tracker
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.
About This Page
“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.
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Proposed legislation would bar Chinese STEM graduate students
On May 28, 2020, Senators Tom Cotton and Marsha Blackburn and Representative David Kustoff, also of Tennessee, introduced legislation that would bar Chinese nationals from all STEM graduate-level programs in the U.S., Inside Higher Ed reports.
Sen. Cotton says Chinese students shouldn’t be allowed to study science in U.S.
On April 26, 2020, Senator Tom Cotton said, “I have little doubt that the Chinese intelligence services are actively trying to steal America’s intellectual property as it relates to the virus that they unleashed on the world,” and suggested that Chinese students should not be allowed to study science in the U.S. as a result, per the New York Post.
Lindsay Graham on Twitter
On August 27, 2019, Senator Lindsey Graham made an incendiary — and hugely popular — statement on Twitter accusing “the Chinese” of cheating, citing no evidence and making no distinction between Chinese people and the Chinese government.
A welcome message, or a warning?
On July 30, 2019, Marie Royce, a senior U.S. State Department official, made remarks titled “The United States Welcomes Chinese Students.” But as Elizabeth Redden at Inside Higher Ed reported, some parts of the remarks were received more as a warning that perpetuated stereotypes of Chinese students.
FBI Director Christopher Wray says China is America’s biggest espionage threat
On July 23, 2019, FBI Director Christopher Wray slightly rephrased his earlier remarks, and said of the Chinese espionage threat, “It’s kind of an all-tools approach by them, and it, therefore, requires an all-tools approach by us.”
A new red scare is reshaping Washington
The New York Times reports on the increasing influence of the racist and xenophobic views of people like Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, and organizations like the Committee on the Present Danger, a Cold War relic whose revival Bannon has spearheaded.
Trump pledges probe into Google ‘treason’ claim
On July 16, 2019, Donald Trump repeated, without evidence, an inflammatory insinuation from billionaire investor Peter Thiel about Google committing “treason” by “working with the Chinese government.”
State Department preparing for clash of civilizations with China
In April 2019, Kiron Skinner, director of policy planning at the State Department, used racial language to describe some of the thinking animating conversation in the American capital. “This is a fight with a really different civilization and a different ideology and the United States hasn’t had that before,” said Skinner. "It’s the first time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian.”
