Efforts to reestablish the US’s controversial ‘China Initiative’ are dead. The programme was created during the first Trump administration and cancelled by former President Biden almost four years ago amid criticisms that it created a hostile environment for Chinese scientists in the US and constituted racial profiling. An attempt within Congress to restart it was scrapped earlier this month following significant opposition mounted by the Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF), the broader Asian American community and allies, including more than 1000 professors, scientists and higher education advocates across the country.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) established the China Initiative in 2018 to crack down on economic espionage and trade secret theft by China. It targeted researchers with connections to China, for example through universities there or Chinese talent recruitment programmes like the ‘Thousand Talents’ scheme.
Academics in the US were charged and prosecuted under this programme for allegedly failing to disclose their ties with China, without serious evidence that they stole technology. Some convictions resulted, the most notable of which was nanoscience pioneer Charles Lieber who chaired Harvard University’s chemistry department, but many of these cases ended up being dismissed due to lack of evidence.
Lieber had faced up to 26 years in prison and fines of over $1 million (£730,000), but he avoided prison and steep fines in April 2023 after being sentenced to time served for the two days he had spent in jail following his January 2020 arrest. Lieber moved to China two years later and became a full-time professor at Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School where he now focuses on materials science and biomedical engineering.
The provision to restart the China Initiative was inserted into a financial year 2026 congressional package. However, it was removed after a final vote on the funding package earlier this month, and the bill was signed into law by President Trump on 23 January.
‘A meaningful victory’
‘This is a meaningful victory,’ the AASF said in a statement. ‘More than 1000 professors, scholars and researchers across the country, led by AASF fellows, as well as over 80 civil rights and advocacy organisations led by AASF and our partnering organisations, opposed this language in a joint letter.’
In July 2025, two AASF fellows sent a letter to House appropriators warning that reinstating the defunct China Initiative would impede the flow of scientific and technological talent into the US while also pushing such expertise out of the country. The letter was publicly circulated by the AASF, as well as by more than 100 faculty at Stanford University, including chemistry Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi and physical chemist Dick Zare.
Nanotechnologist Gang Chen, a Chinese-born researcher who headed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s nanoengineering lab until he was taken into custody in January 2021 and prosecuted under the China initiative, was one of over 1000 faculty members and researchers at other US research institutions who endorsed the Stanford letter.
‘As someone who lived through the human cost of the China Initiative, this outcome matters deeply,’ stated Chen, whose case was eventually dropped by prosecutors when the case against him collapsed, in the AASF announcement.
Chen tells Chenistry World that ending efforts to resurrect the China Initiative is ‘an important step’, but suggests the fight to prevent its return will continue. He urges research universities, funding agencies and policymakers to ‘remain vigilant so that scientists are not singled out again, and future researchers can pursue their work without fear’.
There have been repeated attempts within Congress to restore the China Initiative since its termination in February 2022, but until now those efforts typically involved rebranding and renaming the programme.
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