A married couple from China, who were convicted of stealing trade secrets from the US paediatric research institution where they worked, have now lost their naturalised US citizenship and face likely deportation back to China. The development comes amid indications from the Trump administration that it would prioritise denaturalisation in cases related to economic espionage.
On 30 March, a federal judge in California granted the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) request that Li Chen and Yu Zhou be denaturalised, concluding that they had committed ‘crimes involving moral turpitude’ that prevented them from having the ‘good moral character’ necessary to naturalise.
Chen and Zhou came to the US in 2007 and 2008, respectively, on H-1B specialty occupation visas sponsored by Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) in Ohio. Chen was naturalised in 2016, and Zhou was naturalised the following year.
In 2020, the pair admitted stealing a proprietary method for isolating exosomes – biomolecule-carrying vesicles that are released by many cell types – from samples of blood or other fluid. According to the DOJ, the pair conspired to monetise the technology by creating exosome ‘isolation kits’ that were to be sold by a company that Chen had set up in China. Exosomes are being researched for their potential in the identification and treatment of various medical conditions.
Chen and Zhou worked in separate medical research labs at NCH for a decade, overlapping for nine of those years, and received funding from the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents programme, according to the DOJ.
After having completed prison sentences of 30 and 33 months, respectively, Chen and Zhou were serving three years of supervised release when their citizenships were revoked. The two have been ordered to pay $2.6 million (£1.96 million) in restitution to NCH and Chen also had to forfeit approximately $1.4 million in company stocks. The US government has indicated it may continue to seize their assets, regardless of whether they are in the US or back in China.
China Initiative’s ongoing legacy
Chen and Zhou were originally arrested in 2019 and prosecuted under the DOJ’s now-defunct China Initiative. Established during the first Trump administration to crack down on Chinese state-backed espionage and intellectual property theft, the China Initiative was cancelled by former president Joe Biden in February 2022 amid criticisms that it created a hostile environment for Chinese scientists in the US and constituted racial profiling. Many of the cases brought against academics under this programme were ultimately dismissed due to lack of evidence.
Most researchers prosecuted under that programme were accused of failing to disclose affiliations with Chinese institutions on grant applications. But the case against Chen and Zhou involved the theft of trade secrets for personal and foreign financial gain.
Peter Zeidenberg, a Washington, DC-based lawyer who represented chemistry professor Feng ‘Franklin’ Tao who was acquitted in 2024 after being wrongly convicted under the China Initiative, says the outcome of Chen and Zhou’s cases were predictable.
‘As an immigration matter, if this offence was ongoing at the time the couple was applying for citizenship – and presumably they failed to disclose this – then this result would not be particularly surprising,’ he states.
The China Initiative might not be completely gone but has been ‘significantly scaled back’, Zeidenberg suggests. ‘Certainly, it is the case that research scientists are no longer being prosecuted on the basis of failing to disclose affiliations with Chinese universities,’ he tells Chemistry World.
Earlier this year an attempt to restart the China Initiative was abandoned following pressure from the Asian American Scholar Forum, the broader Asian American community and allies. However, political efforts to reinstate the programme in some form are continuing, with the latest being a bill that effectively seeks to bring it back under a new name. The legislation, which passed the House Judiciary Committee on 26 March and is awaiting a full floor vote in the House of Representatives, has a companion measure in the Senate.
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