by Bochen Han in SCMP, Dec 12, 2023
Washington: Leading House Democrats are urging the US government’s chief audit agency to ensure that ongoing efforts to investigate allegations of Chinese and foreign influence in federally funded research are “free from bias”.

The call is the latest development affecting the delicate balance the US government seeks to strike between protecting national security and preserving a culture of open research collaboration.

“Contributions from US scientists of diverse backgrounds and foreign researchers have made the United States a science and technology powerhouse,” wrote Judy Chu, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, in a letter sent on Monday to Gene Dodaro, head of the US Government Accountability Office.

Chu’s letter, also signed by the top Democrats on the House oversight and science committees, asserted that US government responses to concerns about influence attempts by foreign entities, particularly those in China, had led to disproportionately high numbers of ethnically Asian researchers being targeted and losing their jobs.

In 2018, the National Institutes of Health – an American government agency responsible for biomedical and public health research – began investigating 246 US-based scientists who allegedly failed to disclose research conducted in another country or affiliations with foreign institutions.

Chu’s letter cited reporting that revealed 103 of them had lost their jobs and that 81 per cent of the scientists under investigation identified as Asian.

“These data highlight the need to examine whether federal agencies ensure that such investigations are free from bias and do not result in discriminatory treatment,” it stated.

In contrast to the highly publicised China Initiative run by the US Department of Justice – a now-defunct programme that sought to counter Beijing’s economic espionage – the NIH’s version was mostly conducted behind closed doors.

Last week, 45 organisations, mostly Asian-American groups, wrote to congressional leaders to oppose any effort to reinstate the China Initiative.

The group cited congressional documents regarding a House appropriations bill that called ending the initiative “unwise”.

Started in 2018 and scrapped last year, the China Initiative has been widely criticised for disproportionately targeting people of Chinese heritage and pursuing cases with little or no obvious ties to national security or trade secret theft.

Many cases pursued under the programme were ultimately dropped, including that of Gang Chen, a China-born MIT scientist who was accused of misrepresenting his relationship to China on funding documents.

Finding a complete accounting of dropped cases is difficult, as the Justice Department has not clearly explained what led it to classify a case under the initiative.

In recent years, Sino-American cooperation on science and technology has increasingly come under US government scrutiny.

Earlier this year, efforts to renew a bilateral science cooperation agreement stalled over concerns among Americans lawmakers regarding intellectual property theft and unintended benefits flowing to China’s military.

In August, days before the science deal was due to expire, the US government announced it would temporarily extend the agreement for six months.

Speaking on Monday at the Hudson Institute, Republican congressman Mike Waltz of Florida, a member of the permanent select committee on intelligence, raised concern that the Chinese government was “weaponising” race to counter concerns about academic espionage.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3244734/top-us-government-audit-agency-urged-ensure-china-influence-probes-are-kept-free-bias