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.
"The plan would be the first designed to bar the access of a category of Chinese students, who, over all, form the single largest foreign student population in the United States," the New York Times reported.
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.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on how the ill-considered, badly executed Trump administration “crackdown on scholars with ties to China has triggered a reverse brain drain.” Specifically, they focus on one researcher, Tán Wèihóng 谭蔚泓, who was hounded out of the U.S. last year, and became the leader of a successful project in China to develop a fast, easy test for COVID-19.
"From 2000 through 2009, clearance applicants with connections to China—such as family or financial relationships—were denied Pentagon clearances at the same rate as applicants with links to all other countries: 44%. But from 2010 through Oct. 31 this year, the China-related denial rate jumped to 61%, and the rate for all other countries fell to 34%," reported Bloomberg.
"While some government leaders have expressed concerns about the potential theft of intellectual property and prepublication results by foreign governments that threaten our national security, we must never resort to suspicion based on a person’s national origin. To do so is nothing short of discrimination, which is antithetical to our values as an institution. Racial profiling, in any context, is corrosive to our community."
"The N.I.H. and the F.B.I. have begun a vast effort to root out scientists who they say are stealing biomedical research for other countries from institutions across the United States. Almost all of the incidents they uncovered and that are under investigation involve scientists of Chinese descent, including naturalized American citizens, allegedly stealing for China," reports the New York Times.
On August 29, 2019, the president of Arizona State University wrote a letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security to express his “serious concern” about the unexplained denial of entry of nine Chinese undergraduate students, Sixth Tone reports.
Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, writes that the U.S. government's "policing attempts thrust economic and political concerns into fierce conflict with First Amendment freedoms."
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.
