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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Targeting of Research

The U.S. is purging Chinese cancer researchers from top institutions

Wú Xīfèng 吴息凤, a naturalized American citizen and “the top-ranked epidemiologist at the nation’s top-ranked cancer center,” MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, was forced out of her research position. Bloomberg Businessweek says that “Wu hasn’t been charged with stealing anyone’s ideas, but in effect she stood accused of secretly aiding and abetting cancer research in China, an un-American activity in today’s political climate.”

June 13, 2019 Bloomberg Businessweek

Targeting of Research

Terminated Emory researcher disputes university’s allegations about China ties

In May 2019, Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, sacked two neuroscientists, Lǐ Xiǎojiāng 李晓江, and his wife, Lǐ Shìhuá 李世华, after they were accused of failing to “fully disclose foreign sources of research funding and the extent of his work for research institutions and universities in China.”

May 24, 2019 Science