US researcher entanglements continue post-China Initiative as worries over IP theft linger

More than a year after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) ended its controversial China Initiative, amid growing criticism that it was tantamount to racially profiling researchers and detrimental to the nation’s scientific enterprise, cases of inappropriate links between academics in the country and the Chinese government are still coming to light.

Established by the Trump administration to quash Chinese state-backed efforts to steal US intellectual property (IP) or trade secrets from universities and industry, the China Initiative was cancelled in February 2022 after many criminal cases that the DOJ brought against researchers were dismissed. Harvard’s former chemistry department chair Charles Lieber – who was convicted more than a year ago of felony charges stemming from his receipt of millions of dollars in research funding from China – awaits sentencing later this month.

During a 3 March media briefing on competition and research security at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) annual meeting in Washington DC, the head of research security at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) revealed a concerning case that had just come across her desk that morning. She said that the questionable contract signed between an NSF-funded researcher in the US and an entity associated with the Chinese government, of which neither the agency nor his home institution in the US were aware, explained Rebecca Keiser, the NSF’s chief of research security strategy and policy.