US espionage prosecutions ‘discriminatory’ against Chinese and Asian defendants, says Committee of 100
- Study sponsored by the Committee of 100 examines court filings of 190 Economic Espionage Act cases involving 276 defendants between 1996 and 2020
- Research finds disparities in the way that defendants with Asian or Chinese names versus Western names have been arrested and sentenced in these cases
Espionage prosecutions in the US have punished Chinese and Asian defendants more severely, and may have falsely accused them more often than Western defendants, according to a new report.
“All of us law-abiding citizens who care about America, its strength and its vitality have to be concerned about the way the Justice Department, the FBI and law enforcement have been pursuing these Economic Espionage Act cases,” Gary Locke, chairman of the C100 and a former US ambassador to China, said on Tuesday.
“The unfair and unequal discriminatory treatment of Chinese-Americans and Asian-Americans in contrast to people with non-Asian names is absolutely shocking and unacceptable.”
Targeting suspected commercial espionage by China started under the Obama administration. The proportion of defendants of Chinese descent accused of EEA offences grew from 16 per cent before 2009 to more than half between 2009 and 2016, a proportion that continued into the Trump administration, according to the report.
The China Initiative, launched in 2018 during the Trump administration, has focused on finding Chinese spies working in American universities. However, many of the investigations ended in charges that were not for espionage, but for crimes such as fraud or making false statements.