Chinese researchers say that the US border is a place of terror
The need for China more than the US: Establishing trust in public affairs between Chinese and European governments through research collaboration on climate change, air quality and air quality
Lee says the US needs China more than China needs the US. “Policymakers need to realize ethnic Chinese [researchers] are one of our greatest assets to help build trust with Chinese nationals.”
There are always risks when researchers of differing political systems collaborate. Holdren says it doesn’t surprise anyone that big powers spy on each other. The answer to handling risks in public affairs is to use rigorously tested knowledge, as with most applications of science in public affairs.
The document recognizes the benefits that come from closer ties, while advocating a realism approach to future links, which is based on practical objectives rather than ideology. Universities should decide what is mutually beneficial in this regard, while taking the necessary precautions to protect against possible harm, that’s what it says.
And then there’s climate change. After a period of silence that began in 2022, the two countries began talking again last year, thanks in no small measure to the long-standing relationship between their then climate envoys, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua. California and China agreed to cut carbon emissions and use less fossil fuel in a deal done last year. Both Kerry and Zhenhua are moving on to new roles, and the legacy of their diplomatic efforts risks being undermined if scientists in the two nations cannot maintain their research ties.
Collaboration between the two countries on environmental protection includes projects to monitor and improve air and water quality, as well as watershed protection, and projects to reduce electronic waste — benefiting both countries in different ways. The relationship between China and the US Environmental Protection Agency has been described as one of its most significant.
When it comes to global challenges, researchers in China, the United States and Europe are cooperating extensively on studying the role of nature in human prosperity1,2. This evolving body of work is foundational to ongoing efforts to incorporate nature into how economies are valued.
The impact of the China Initiative on early-career research careers in the US: How Chinese students are being profiled and why the US is trying to sabotage itself
The project seeks to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation. Since 2009, China and the United States have been working together to convert a type of nuclear research reactor called a miniature neutron source reactor so that instead of using highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium as fuel, it runs on low-enriched uranium — which cannot be used in nuclear weapons. China has supplied this type of reactor to Iran and other countries. This cooperation has contributed to a safer world.
Early-career researchers are also struggling amid the scrutiny. The impact of the China Initiative on graduate student career plans is explained in a preprint by Lee and her colleagues. The authors found that Chinese students felt more like they were being profiled than people who did not identify as Chinese. More than 70% of the Chinese students have experienced anxiety about being surveilled or racially profiled by the US government as well as professional challenges regarding promotion or professional recognition. Only one third of the students who did not identify as Chinese reported these issues.
Yiguang Ju moved to the US after finishing his PhD at Tohoku University in Japan in 1994, he said, and he believes that Chinese students now feel that they do not have a future in this country. Two of his senior students took assistant professor positions to conduct plasma-modelling research at two separate universities in China. He believes that the US can not do this research because it would get a bad reception in other parts of the world. At the Tokyo Institute of Technology, for example, roughly 55% of PhD students are from China.
Ju switched his focus to renewable energy in order to continue his work in the US. He was granted $5 million by the DoE in October to head the Energy Earthshot Research Center, which is about clean hydrogen.
Chen has also switched his research focus to something less controversial. The research on Semiconductors was named a breakthrough of the year in 2022, says Chen. “Now, I work on water. I joke with people, there are no secrets in water,” he says. Chen leads a small group of five people, supported mainly by MIT grants.
Lee says the question is about whether new relationships will be formed in the future. The US is trying to sabotage itself. It is at risk of disrupting not only the flow of Chinese talent into the country, she says, but also US–China research collaborations.
We are working with the White House and federal grant agencies to make sure that scholars from Asian descent have a seat at the table. Gisela Perez Kusakawa, executive director of the AASF stated that their voices are critical in ensuring that any future policies don’t have an effect on the Asian American scholar community.
Kai Li, a computer scientist atPrinceton University, feared for his and his family’s safety as soon as the China Initiative began. He stopped seeking federal funds when he scaled down his research. Data Domain is a California data-storage company that has received funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Li has been to many conferences in China and given talks at Chinese universities.
The statement claimed that the DoJ’s National Security Division would be used in future investigations. It gives prosecutors and law enforcement the ability to better determine if criminal prosecution is necessary. The statement confirms that, for cases involving academic integrity and research security, “the National Security Division will take an active supervisory role in the investigations and prosecutions. In evaluating cases moving forward, NSD will work with the FBI and other investigative agencies to assess the evidence of intent and materiality, as well as the nexus to our national or economic security.”
When Nature asked the DoJ to comment on the rationale for targeting scientists who had made errors or omissions in their grant applications, the department pointed to remarks made in February that year by an assistant attorney-general. The statement acknowledged researchers’ concerns at that time:
Before she signed the document, the MIT chemist crossed out anything that would make her question her students. “We really don’t have the background or the training to bring interrogation into an education and research space,” she says.
Alongside increased border surveillance of their researchers, universities are also grappling with guidelines stemming from the 2022 US CHIPS and Science Act, which provides US$52.7 billion for domestic semiconductor research. The guidelines suggest that research universities receiving federal funding must certify that no researchers or students are participating in “a malign foreign talent recruitment program”. MIT is asking researchers who receive DOE funds to prove that they did not participate in any talent-recruitment programmes involving China, Russia, North Korea or Iran.
“I usually have 20 scientists from China in my group; I currently have 8,” he says. fundamental mathematics research is not applied science. His work underpins artificial intelligence and machine learning. Unlike previous years, this year he received no applications from graduates of Peking University in Beijing, one of the top maths programmes in the world, to join his group.
When an engineer of Chinese descent, who wishes to remain anonymous, took a flight back to his US university from a conference in Canada in September last year, he got a surprise at a stopover in Chicago, Illinois. Everyone was asked to show their passports at the gate by the captain. The engineer, who has a Chinese passport and a green card to live and work permanently in the United States, estimates that he was detained for 90 minutes, and was asked to share his phone and laptop passwords or surrender his devices. He recalls being asked about any of the technologies that he had collaborated with Chinese colleagues on and whether they were being transferred somewhere else.
Jenny Lee, who studies migration policies and politics in higher education at the University of Arizona, says that even though the China Initiative is officially over, the chilling climate created by it still exists. The US House of Representatives appropriations committee, which oversees government expenditures, called on the DoJ to backtrack on the initiative in November 2023.
He pulled his name from joint publications with his partners in China because of the unnerving experience. He says that before the incident, he was thinking of changing his passport to become a US citizen. They are treating us as if we are spies.
Two years after the end of the controversial China Initiative, academics describe being treated like spies, a loss of talent and a chilling atmosphere that is stifling science.
