US drops case against MIT professor Chen

The US Justice Department on Thursday dropped all charges against a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor accused of concealing his ties to China when seeking federal grant money.

Last week, federal prosecutors in Boston recommended dismissal of the case against Chinese-born mechanical engineer and nanotechnologist Gang Chen. He was indicted a year ago on charges of failing to disclose contracts, appointments and awards from various entities in China to the US Department of Energy.

The Justice Department said in a motion filed in the federal court in Boston that the decision to dismiss the case was a result of new information the government had received about Chen's allegations.

US Attorney Rachael Rollins said, "Having assessed the evidence as a whole in light of that information, the government can no longer meet its burden of proof at trial. Dismissal of the indictment is therefore in the interest of justice."

"Even when cases are dismissed, many Chinese and Asian Americans have their lives, careers and health greatly affected. Our support and sympathies go to Professor Chen and his family as they work to rebuild their lives," said Zhengyu Huang, president of the Committee of 100, in a statement.

"For too long, Chinese Americans and the AAPI community have been seen as the perpetual foreigner — strangers in our own homeland. Today, we are all Gang Chen and stand united," he said.

The Committee of 100 is an organization of Chinese Americans in business, government, academia and the arts whose stated aim is "to encourage constructive relations between the peoples of the United States and Greater China".

Chen was indicted on the last full day of the administration of former president Donald Trump. Then-US attorney Andrew Lelling unveiled the charges at a news conference on that day, saying, "The allegations in the complaint imply that this was not just about greed, but about loyalty to China."

Following Chen's arrest, 100 faculty members at MIT said they stood in solidarity with him and condemned the US action against the Chinese scientist. The "allegations" show that the complaint "represents a deep misunderstanding of how research is conducted or funded" in an academic environment, they said in an open letter.

For instance, the government accused Chen of receiving $29 million in foreign funding, including $19 million from the Southern University of Science and Technology in China, since 2013. But MIT was the recipient of the $29 million, and the fund "benefited the institute, the research programs of many of its faculty and its students", according to the letter.

The trial of Anming Hu, a former professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, was the first of dozens of prosecutions under the China Initiative. He was charged with wire fraud and making a false statement in February 2020 and was acquitted of all charges in September 2021.

Last month, MIT Technology Review published a report showing how far the China Initiative, launched by the Trump administration, has strayed from its claimed goal of combating economic espionage.

The report found that the DOJ has neither officially defined the China Initiative nor explained what leads it to label a case as part of the initiative. It also said the initiative's focus increasingly has moved away from economic espionage and hacking cases to "research integrity" issues, such as failures to fully disclose foreign affiliations on forms.

In response to the MIT Technology Review's analysis, Lelling wrote on LinkedIn that "the initiative has drifted and, in some significant ways, lost its focus".

"DOJ should revamp, and shut down, parts of the program, to avoid needlessly chilling scientific and business collaboration with Chinese partners," he said.

Leaders of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) on Wednesday met with US Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matt Olsen on "China Initiative" concerns.

US Congresswoman Judy Chu of California, chair of the CAPAC, said CAPAC members expressed their views at the meeting that this initiative has fallen far short of its stated goal of addressing economic espionage and has instead resulted in numerous false accusations against Chinese researchers and scientists based on their ethnicity.

Olsen was tasked to conduct an independent and thorough review of the "China Initiative". The process was expected to be complete in the coming weeks.