Sunday, 19 December 2021

Hong Kong’s Freedoms: What China Promised and How It’s Cracking Down

Beijing has tightened its grip on Hong Kong in recent years, dimming hopes that the financial center will ever become a full democracy.

WRITTEN BY

Lindsay Maizland and Eleanor Albert

UPDATED

Last updated February 17, 2021 12:00 pm (EST)

Summary

Before the British government handed over Hong Kong in 1997, China agreed to allow the region considerable political autonomy for fifty years under a framework known as “one country, two systems.”
In recent years, Beijing has cracked down on Hong Kong’s freedoms, stoking mass protests in the city and drawing international criticism.
Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020 that gave it broad new powers to punish critics and silence dissenters and could fundamentally alter life for Hong Kongers.

Introduction

China pledged to preserve much of what makes Hong Kong unique when the former British colony was handed over more than two decades ago. Beijing said it would give Hong Kong fifty years to keep its capitalist system and enjoy many freedoms not found in mainland Chinese cities.

But it seems that these promises are fading. In recent years, Beijing has taken what critics say are brazen steps to encroach on Hong Kong’s political system and crack down on dissent. These moves sparked massive protests in Hong Kong and have drawn international condemnation. In 2020, Beijing passed a controversial national security law and arrested dozens of pro-democracy activists and lawmakers, dimming hopes that Hong Kong will ever become a full-fledged democracy.

Is Hong Kong part of China?

Hong Kong is a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China that has been largely free to manage its own affairs based on “one country, two systems,” a national unification policy developed by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. The concept was intended to help integrate Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau with sovereign China while preserving their unique political and economic systems. After more than a century and a half of colonial rule, the British government returned Hong Kong in 1997. (Qing Dynasty leaders ceded Hong Kong Island to the British Crown in 1842 after China’s defeat in the First Opium War.) Portugal returned Macau in 1999, and Taiwan remains independent.

The Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 dictated the terms under which Hong Kong was returned to China. The declaration and Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the city’s constitutional document, enshrine the city’s “capitalist system and way of life” and grant it “a high degree of autonomy,” including executive, legislative, and independent judicial powers for fifty years (until 2047).

Chinese Communist Party officials do not preside over Hong Kong as they do over mainland provinces and municipalities, but Beijing still exerts considerable influence through loyalists who dominate the region’s political sphere. Beijing also maintains the authority to interpret Hong Kong’s Basic Law, a power that it had rarely used until recently. All changes to political processes have to be approved by the Hong Kong government and China’s top legislative body, the National People’s Congress, or its Standing Committee.

China Administrative Regions

Hong Kong is allowed to forge external relations in certain areas—including trade, communications, tourism, and culture—but Beijing maintains control over the region’s diplomacy and defense. Under the Basic Law, Hong Kongers are guaranteed freedoms of the press, expression, assembly, and religion, as well as protections under international law. But in practice, Beijing has curtailed some of these rights.

Is Hong Kong a democracy?

Although Hong Kong has certain freedoms, it is not a full democracy [PDF] by international standards. China is a one-party state and is reluctant to allow Hong Kong to hold free and fair elections. Experts say that ambiguity in the Basic Law heightens this fundamental tension. The document states that the “ultimate aim” is to have Hong Kong’s leader elected by a popular vote, but it does not give a deadline for this to occur.

Since the handover, there have been no free votes by universal suffrage for the chief executive, who is the head of the Hong Kong government. Instead, an election committee composed of representatives from Hong Kong’s main professional sectors [PDF] and business elite has selected them. During the most recent election, in 2017, only candidates vetted by a nominating committee chosen by Beijing were allowed to run. Carrie Lam, viewed as an establishment candidate, won and became Hong Kong’s first woman chief executive.

Thirty-five members of Hong Kong’s legislature, the Legislative Council, are elected by direct voting, while the other thirty-five members are chosen by groups representing different industries and professions. Hong Kong residents also get to vote for members of their local district councils, which handle day-to-day community concerns.

Unlike China, Hong Kong has numerous political parties. They have traditionally split between two factions: pan-democrats, who call for incremental democratic reforms, and pro-establishment groups, who are by and large pro-business supporters of Beijing. The latter have typically been more dominant in Hong Kong politics, but pro-democracy groups have increasingly garnered more support from voters.

Traditionally, only a small minority of Hong Kongers have favored outright independence. However, in recent years, student protesters demanding a more demoractic system have formed political groups, including more radical, anti-Beijing parties, such as Youngspiration, and Hong Kong Indigenous, and Demosisto. These parties tapped into the phenomenon in which more and more people see themselves as Hong Kongers or as Hong Kongers in China as opposed to identifying as Chinese nationals. Several of these groups disbanded in 2020, however, as Beijing cracked down on political opposition.

How has Beijing eroded Hong Kong’s freedoms?

Beijing has been chipping away at Hong Kong’s freedoms since the handover, experts say. Over the years, its attempts to impose more control over the city have sparked mass protests, which have in turn led the Chinese government to crack down further.

“In the fifteen years after the handover, there was a series of official initiatives aimed at enhancing Beijing’s control in ways that would undermine both the autonomy and the rule of law,” Michael C. Davis writes in his book Making Hong Kong China.

For instance, in 2003, the Hong Kong government proposed national security legislation that would have prohibited treason, secession, sedition, and subversion against the Chinese government. In 2012, it tried to amend Hong Kong schools’ curricula to foster Chinese national identity, which many residents saw as Chinese propaganda. And in 2014, Beijing proposed a framework for universal suffrage, allowing Hong Kongers to vote for the city’s chief executive but only from a Beijing-approved short list of candidates. Protesters organized massive rallies, known as the Umbrella Movement, to call for true democracy.

In the years following the 2014 protests, Beijing and the Hong Kong government stepped up efforts to rein in dissent, including by prosecuting protest leaders, expelling several new legislators, and increasing media censorship.

Hong Kong Since the Handover

A military aide salutes Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, at a departure ceremony on June 30, 1997.

David Gray/Reuters

In the summer of 2019, Hong Kong saw its largest protests ever. For months, people demonstrated against a Beijing-endorsed legislative proposal that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. Many protesters believed Beijing had eroded Hong Kong’s freedoms to such an extent that they thought, “either we stop it now, or it’s just basically going to be hell,” says Victoria Tin-bor Hui, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame. Reports of police brutality, including the excessive use of tear gas and rubber bullets, exacerbated tensions. Chief Executive Lam withdrew the bill in September, but the protests, which garnered international attention, continued until the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020.

What is the national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong?

Beijing took its most assertive action yet on June 30, 2020, when it bypassed the Hong Kong legislature and imposed a new national security law on the city. The legislation effectively criminalizes any dissent, and adopts extremely broad definitions for crimes such as terrorism, subversion, secession, and collusion with foreign powers. It also allows Beijing to establish a security force in Hong Kong and influence the selection of judges who will hear national security cases. Pro-democracy activists and lawmakers decried the move and expressed fears that it could be “the end of Hong Kong.” Meanwhile, Chinese officials and pro-Beijing lawmakers said it was necessary to restore stability following the massive protests.

Authorities have used the law to try to eliminate all forms of political opposition. They disqualified pro-democracy candidates from running in the 2020 legislative elections, which were ultimately postponed, and removed elected lawmakers for publicly opposing China’s control over Hong Kong. In addition, police have arrested dozens of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy activists and former lawmakers, and the government has started to prosecute them. These moves have silenced many Hong Kong residents who had fought for democracy and prompted others to flee the city. The Hong Kong government’s efforts to transform the public education system by introducing so-called patriotic programs have also troubled many parents and students.

What has been the international response to Beijing’s actions?

Several countries have condemned Beijing’s moves and taken retaliatory measures. The administration of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump imposed sanctions on Chinese officials it alleged were undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy, including Lam; restricted exports of defense equipment to Hong Kong; and started revoking its special trade status. The United States also joined a handful of countries, such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, that suspended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong because of the national security law. U.S. President Joe Biden has indicated that his administration will continue to press for Hong Kong’s freedoms. In his first phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Biden voiced concerns about Beijing’s crackdown.

The United Kingdom, which also ended its extradition agreement with the region, said it would allow three million Hong Kong residents to settle in the country and apply for citizenship. Canada announced measures to make it easier for Hong Kong youth to study and work in the country, creating pathways for permanent residency. The European Union, which expressed “grave concern” about the national security law, limited exports of equipment that China could use for repression and vowed to ease visa and asylum policies for Hong Kong residents.

However, the opposition has not been unanimous. Fifty-three countries—most of which are participating in China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project—signed a statement read before the UN Human Rights Council in July 2020 supporting Beijing’s national security law, while only twenty-seven countries signed an opposing statement criticizing it.

What does Beijing’s crackdown mean for Hong Kong’s financial status?

It is too soon to tell whether Beijing’s actions will jeopardize Hong Kong’s role as a global financial hub. Relatively low taxes, a highly developed financial system, light regulation, and other capitalist features have made Hong Kong one of the world’s most attractive markets and set it apart from mainland financial hubs such as Shanghai and Shenzhen. Multinational firms and banks—many of which maintain regional headquarters in Hong Kong—have historically used the city as a gateway to do business in the mainland, owing in part to its proximity to the world’s second-largest economy and its legal system based on British common law.

“It seems that you really cannot maintain Hong Kong’s international financial standing while stifling its freedom.”
Victoria Tin-bor Hui, University of Notre Dame

Recommended Resources

On The President’s Inbox podcast, Victoria Tin-bor Hui explains the national security law imposed on Hong Kong.

In Foreign Affairs, Michael C. Davis argues that Hong Kong is now part of mainland China.

The Congressional Research Service outlines the national security law for Hong Kong [PDF], the composition of Hong Kong’s legislative body [PDF], and the status of U.S.-Hong Kong relations [PDF].

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation tells the story of the massive protests in 2019.

The Financial Times lays out Xi Jinping’s grand plan for the Greater Bay Area.

For media inquiries on this topic, please reach out to communications@cfr.org.

Source

Peng Shuai now denies making sexual assault allegations

Concerns about Peng’s safety have been raised after she dropped out of public sight after accusations were made in November

Published: Dec. 19, 2021 at 11:05 p.m. ET

Associated Press

China’s Peng Shuai plays at the Australian Open in Melbourne in January 2020.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BEIJING — Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has told a Singapore newspaper that she never said she wrote of having been sexually assaulted, despite a November social media post attributed to her that accused a former top Communist Party official of having forced her into sex.

The Lianhe Zaobao Chinese-language newspaper posted video of Peng it says was taken Sunday in Shanghai in which she said she has been mainly staying at home in Beijing but was free to come and go as she chose.

“First of all, I want to emphasize something that is very important. I have never said that I wrote that anyone sexually assaulted me. I need to emphasize this point very clearly,” Peng told the newspaper’s reporter.

The reporter did not ask how or why the lengthy and highly detailed Nov. 2 post appeared or whether Peng’s account had been hacked.

The paper said it interviewed Peng at a promotional event for the Beijing Winter Olympic Games which begin Feb. 4. She was filmed on the observation deck of a facility where she watched a freestyle ski competition alongside former NBA star Yao Ming and other Chinese sports figures.

Peng dropped out of site after the accusation against former vice premier Zhang Gaoli briefly appeared on her verified Weibo social media before being swiftly removed. Screen shots of the post were shared across the internet, drawing widespread concern about Peng’s safety from politicians, fellow tennis stars and the World Tennis Association, which announced it was suspending all events in China indefinitely.

Following the posting, the three-time Olympian and former Wimbledon champion appeared standing beside a tennis court in Beijing, waving and signing oversize commemorative tennis balls for children. The foreign arm of state TV also issued a statement in English attributed to Peng that retracted her accusation against Zhang.

WTA chief executive Steve Simon questioned the emailed statement’s legitimacy while others said it only increased their concern about her safety. In the Lianhe Zaobao interview, Peng said she wrote the statement in Chinese and it was later translated into English but that there was no substantive difference in meaning between the two versions.

Zhang, 75, was a member of the party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee until 2018 and a top lieutenant to president and party leader Xi Jinping. He has not appeared in public or commented on Peng’s accusation.

Simon said the move to put a halt to the tour’s play in China, including Hong Kong, came with the backing of the WTA board of directors, players, tournaments and sponsors. It was the strongest public stand against China taken by a sports body — and one that could cost the WTA millions of dollars.

Simon has made repeated calls for China to carry out an inquiry into the 35-year-old Peng’s accusations and to allow the WTA to communicate directly with the former No. 1-ranked doubles player and owner of titles at Wimbledon and the French Open.

The IOC has taken a different tack, with top officials saying they believe Peng is fine after video chatting with her.

The controversy surrounding Peng has added to protests over Beijing’s hosting of the Winter Games because of the government’s human rights abuses.

Source

Electronic Weapons: Huawei Network Spyware

December 19, 2021:

Chinese smartphone and telecommunications giant Huawei has long been accused of secretly equipping its phones with software and hardware features that can be used to send user information back to China. Recently Western Internet security researchers discovered how some countries can use Huawei phone software to monitor and censor journalists of the government via a commonly used router accessory called middlebox hardware. Using special middlebox software supplied by Huawei, nations can quietly censor user access to certain subjects or identifying such users and secretly pass on offending messages to someone else. Internet security researchers discovered that a quarter of the 69 countries studied were using Huawei middlebox features for censorship, especially against local journalists distributing stories critical of the local government or specific officials.

Middlebox is a term first used in 1999 to describe a growing number of hardware devices installed in networks for security reasons or system efficiency. Huawei developed middlebox hardware that worked with software features included in all Huawei phones. If a government allowed Huawei phones to be imported and sold, Huawei would, depending on the government, point to middlebox capabilities in Huawei phones that enabled the local government to easily censor Huawei phone users as well as let the government know who the offenders were. Less well known was that all data collected by Huawei middlebox systems was also sent back to China “for quality control purposes.”

As the many capabilities of Huawei middlebox tech became known, a growing number of countries banned Huawei from selling their phones locally. This kept Huawei out of many major markets. By the end of 2019 America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Taiwan banned use of Huawei phones on mobile phone networks. Many other nations adopted prohibitions when it was discovered that the new 5G network tech offered by Huawei contained even more exploitable (potential spyware) middlebox capabilities. Many nations investigated the Huawei 5G tech and banned certain elements of it. All this action against Huawei middlebox tech has caused Huawei phones to lose sales. For example, Huawei phones worldwide shipments hit a high of 20 percent of all phones sold in mid-2020 and have since declined to less than eight percent. The latest Huawei middlebox revelations won’t help. Huawei will survive because they still dominate the Chinese market and cellphone sales in most nations they are allowed to sell to. China is the largest cellphone market and while Huawei is not government owned, it is run by loyal CCP (Chinese Communist Party) members who became rich by following orders.

Huawei was founded in 1987 by former Chinese military officers who still had connections in high places. All the founders were active members of the CCP and Huawei used that form of protection to plunder Western tech secrets and ignore foreign patents whenever possible. Many foreign competitors were told if they wanted access to the growing Chinese market, they had to keep quiet about what Huawei had “borrowed” from them. Most foreign companies complied, but none forgot. Now decades of grievances against Huawei are suddenly threatening the very existence of Huawei outside China, and greatly reducing its international power and potential.

In 2019 the Americans put sanctions on Huawei specifically, cutting it off from American tech. That meant Huawei smartphones could no longer use Android, or at least not the most current versions, or receive updates. American suppliers of microchips also halted shipments. China says it can produce the needed components domestically and has developed another operating system for their smartphones. But ramping up the domestic production of needed microchips and getting a new operating system accepted by the market takes time. Getting a new operating system accepted by the export markets was particularly difficult and even getting domestic users to accept it was not easy. In theory it can be done but in practice, it is one of many desperate measures the normally prudent Chinese are being forced to fall back on.

The retaliation against Huawei became very public in late 2018 when Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada at the request of the United States. Meng Wanzhou is the 46 years old daughter of a former Chinese army officer who was one of the founders of Huawei. Meng was arrested while she was at a Canadian airport transferring from an arriving flight to a connecting one. The Americans had been investigating Huawei for illegally exporting smartphones to Iran and engaging in bank fraud to enable Iran to facilitate foreign trade despite American sanctions against it. Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei CFO (Chief Financial Officer) was to be extradited to the U.S. for prosecution if Meng was unable to get a Canadian court to rule against the extradition request. Canadian leaders insist that the law will be strictly observed and justice done. Her lawyers tried to delay the extradition and kept losing appeals in Canadian courts. This led her father to say that he expects his daughter to be convicted and go to jail.

China acted quickly to put pressure on Canada and nine days after Meng Wanzhou was jailed, they arrested Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, two Canadian citizens working in China. Spavor worked in North Korea as the head of an organization that made it easier for foreigners to do business with North Korea or visit as tourists. Spavor spent a lot of time in China. Kovrig was a former Canadian diplomat who worked for the International Crisis Group, a Belgium based NGO (non-government organization) that worked to prevent or resolve disputes between nations. Spavor and Kovrig were accused of violating state secrets laws. China quietly made it be known that the two Canadians would be released if Meng Wanzhou was set free. She was released in a deal in which she pled guilty of some of the charges against her and the U.S. agreed to go along with that to get the two Canadians freed. That happened three days after Meng Wanzhou was released on September 24th.

Huawei used its close ties with the Chinese military and government intel agencies to get the Chinese government to take Canadians as hostages and threaten them with long prison terms if Meng Wanzhou was not released. The delays in her release were a rebuke to China. This incident reminded many Western nations that avoiding Huawei equipment frustrates Chinese espionage efforts and military operations in general. Many victims of Huawei dirty tricks are now going public with the details since it is safe to do so with Huawei and the Chinese government on the defensive. Huawei has ordered production cuts as foreign customers realize that importing Huawei is, at least for the moment, not a wise business decision. Western nations are still vulnerable to the hostage taking extortion because they do not forbid their citizens from visiting China but it does remind them of the risks of hostages being taken because their home country will not deliver what China demands.

Source

Saturday, 18 December 2021

China Hawks Don’t Understand How Science Advances

The U.S. government’s attempt to keep China from stealing technology has degenerated into a squeeze on its own scientists.

By Dan Wang

DECEMBER 18, 2021

What do we mean, exactly, when we refer to a piece of technology? The answer will help determine whether the United States can maintain its technological superiority over China. Technology takes three distinct forms. It’s an embodied tool, like the pots, pans, or oven in a kitchen. It’s written instruction, like patents, blueprints, or a cake recipe. And it’s process knowledge—the irreplaceable, hard-won practical experience that’s too difficult to write down. Replicating Grandma’s cheesecake is hard, even when you’re working in her kitchen and following her exquisite notes. Unfortunately, in its competition with China, the U.S. is protecting its pots and recipes while putting legal pressure on the cheesecake experts within its own borders—thereby limiting the country’s ability to create new intellectual property. This is a worrisome sign that U.S. authorities are failing to understand something important: The most useful technology is not intellectual property in the form of written documents, but the unwritten knowledge in people’s heads.

Rory Truex: What the fear of China is doing to American science

For decades, Washington has decried China’s intellectual-property theft. With its focus on deterring and punishing cyberintrusions—in which hackers try to make off with blueprints and test data—the U.S. government has elevated written documents and other intellectual property as the primary form of technology that it seeks to protect.

During the Trump administration, federal agencies embarked on a significant escalation. In 2018, then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the “China Initiative,” which he vowed would target the theft of “discoveries that took years of work and millions of dollars in investment here in the United States” but which has morphed into a program to punish U.S.-based scientists for lesser kinds of wrongdoing. Under its aegis, the Justice Department has indicted dozens of researchers and academics. Prominent victims have included science professors at America’s top universities, such as Harvard and MIT. The Harvard nanotechnology researcher Charles Lieber’s trial on charges of hiding Chinese funding began in Boston on Tuesday. Most defendants in these cases are of Chinese origin or descent. Recent reporting in MIT Technology Review suggests that only a quarter of the cases brought under the China Initiative involve alleged intent to steal secrets or spy. The bulk of the prosecutions of the past three years, including Lieber’s, are related to a lack of candor, such as the failure to disclose ties to Chinese funding or institutions in the course of applying for federal grants. To face down these allegations, academics have been subjected to house arrest, the loss of their jobs, and ruinous legal fees.

Read: How immigrants have contributed to American inventiveness

In essence, the U.S. is protecting its tools and blueprints while harming a far more valuable asset: its scientists and scientific communities. This approach is creating a climate of fear that chills legitimate scientific collaboration and may drive away foreign-born scientists who would otherwise make their discoveries in America.

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The U.S. has made this mistake before. During the height of the Red Scare in the 1950s, the U.S. government arrested Qian Xuesen, a physicist who co-founded NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, on the basis of suspected communist sympathies. Deported to China in 1955, Qian subsequently oversaw China’s development of the fission bomb and the hydrogen bomb, as well as the ballistic missiles to deliver them. Deporting Qian, in other words, was a strategic blunder by the U.S. government.

Written instructions can’t replicate practical experience. Even an activity as simple as frying an egg is hard to get right the first time if you have a superb kitchen and a detailed recipe but no cooking experience.

More futile is believing that entire technological industries might be captured in blueprints or reports. The U.S. should have learned this lesson after World War II. In Taking Nazi Technology, an illuminating book published this year, the historian Douglas O’Reagan documented how American agents combed through a defeated Germany’s industrial labs. That country had enjoyed a reputation during the war for leading in the chemical and other science-based industries, while wunderwaffen such as the V-2 rocket were threats for which the Allies had no answer.

Investigators organized under a U.S. Army office called Field Information Agency, Technical (FIAT) started to roam through German labs. A breakthrough product, the microfilm camera, gave the Americans the unprecedented ability to copy documents at scale. These scientists and technicians took on the task with zeal, photographing and sending back home reams of blueprints, scientific reports, and raw experimental data. America wasn’t the only one of the Allies seeking “intellectual reparations.” The Soviet Union, the U.K., and France each drew up their own plans to exploit German technology.

How did the secrets that FIAT unearthed change U.S. industry? Most had little effect. Many American firms in sectors such as machine tools, aircraft, and even chemicals were pleasantly surprised to learn they weren’t much behind their German counterparts. But American industry also discovered that trying to learn whole industries by examining documents was ineffective. The disappointment is summed up by a letter that O’Reagan relates from a British chemical-industry association, which noted: “Much of the ‘know-how’ is impossible to put into words,” and “No amount of ‘given’ information can ever be a substitute for the information obtained in the hard school of practical experience.”

The U.S. had greater success with Operation Paperclip, a better-known program that involved the evacuation or kidnapping of more than 1,000 German scientists to the United States. The greatest of these prizes was the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, a former SS officer whom the U.S. treated strikingly better than it treated Qian. Assisted by other German emigrés, von Braun had a starring role in developing NASA’s Saturn V rocket.

Every piece of technology is the product of a particular system and culture. A successful transfer demands the presence of the scientist, who makes technical adaptations and cultivates a talent pool that over time absorbs novel ideas. Samuel Slater departed the U.K. in 1789 and helped adapt British textile machinery to local conditions in New England in the early 1790s, thus earning the epithet “Slater the Traitor” back home.

In its efforts to prevent technology leakage to China, the U.S. government rightly tries to thwart Chinese computer hacking. Theft is always unacceptable. Furthermore, the U.S. government and American universities alike have a sound basis for examining researchers’ ties to Chinese institutions, because President Xi Jinping himself formally oversees China’s “military-civil fusion” program—an initiative enlisting universities and entrepreneurial firms in that country to contribute to its military modernization.

But the U.S. Justice Department’s China Initiative—which continues under the Biden administration—has expanded beyond the scope of the reasonable. As a result, America stands to drive its most valuable assets in the tech race into China’s arms.

MIT Technology Review maintains a database of 77 cases and more than 150 defendants under the initiative. The most striking fact about these prosecutions is how few allege economic espionage or the theft of trade secrets. On its own terms, the China Initiative has a poor success rate. Only about a quarter of defendants charged have been convicted, according to Tech Review. The only research-integrity case that went to trial before this week resulted in a prominent loss for prosecutors: A federal judge acquitted Anming Hu of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville of charges that he concealed ties with a Chinese university while receiving NASA funding. Even former federal prosecutors are raising doubts about the China Initiative. Andrew Lelling, one of the U.S. attorneys who previously helped steer it, told The Washington Post in September that pursuing academics for grant fraud is “nearing the overkill stage.” The same article quotes another former prosecutor, who said that these cases are now an exercise to “show statistics.”

Overkill has consequences. In a study conducted by the University of Arizona and the Committee of 100, a nonprofit representing prominent Chinese Americans, 42 percent of surveyed Chinese scientists reported that the China Initiative, and other investigations by the FBI, has affected their plans to stay in the U.S. That is surely music to the ears of China’s government, which has already been improving its record of luring back Chinese-born scientists. Although the former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping encouraged his country’s youth to study abroad, Beijing has always maintained programs to entice them to come home. According to the Chinese government’s figures, the share of overseas students who decide to return climbed from a low of 25 percent in 2005 to 64 percent in 2018.

The U.S. needs to learn from past mistakes. Yes, a particular blueprint or written document might help China’s capabilities, and cyberintrusions intended to extract that intellectual property ought to be deterred. But blueprints are worth only so much, and American hawks risk harming a far more valuable resource: the scientists who can develop new forms of intellectual property for America.

Dan Wang is the technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, an economics-research firm.

Source

Friday, 17 December 2021