My TakeA silver lining for Beijing in US witch hunt of Chinese scientists

So you think Washington’s infamous “China initiative” targeting ethnic Chinese scientists in the United States is dead. Think again.

US lawmakers are threatening something worse. At least the FBI and US Justice Department, which carried out the Donald Trump-era programme, have oversight. The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which has come up with its own initiative, has none. Now it is threatening a McCarthyite witch hunt.

The committee last month raised what it described as “grave concerns” about research collaboration between the University of California system and Chinese research entities. The committee’s letter, which threatens an open-ended investigation, particularly singles out the publicly funded university system’s most prestigious institution at Berkeley, and its ties with the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute.

“Berkeley’s PRC-backed collaboration with Tsinghua University raises many red flags,” the letter said. At the same time, the US Department of Education has been asking questions about funding and contracts relating to the Shenzhen Institute. That is unlikely to be a coincidence.

The China initiative focused on alleged criminal activities such as industrial espionage and intellectual property theft. The committee, barely a year old and filled with the most hawkish lawmakers against China, raises the prospect of sanctions and investigation merely for academic association with anything Chinese. While Berkeley is its most recent target, there is no reason to think it won’t expand to other universities and research centres.

It marks a significant escalation of the US tech war against China. The committee heavily hints that Berkeley researchers could be sharing technology with China which can be of “dual use”, that is civilian tech with military applications.

But this has become a catch-all phrase.