More than 1,000 Chinese scholars have left the United States since investigators in several U.S. cities this summer targeted Chinese visiting scholars for concealing their military status and the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, U.S. Justice Department officials said.
John Demers, assistant secretary of national security at the Justice Department, said at an event hosted by the Aspen Institute, a think tank, on Wednesday (Dec. 2, 2020) that a large number of Chinese scholars have left the United States as the Justice Department opens multiple criminal investigations into Chinese nationals who engaged in industrial and technological espionage in the United States.
A Justice Department official was quoted by Reuters as saying that the military-linked researchers “fled” the United States after the FBI conducted interviews in dozens of cities and after the State Department closed the Chinese consulate in Houston in July.
Demers said in August that the U.S. did not pick and choose at random to close the consulate in Houston. He said investigators conducted 50 interviews in 30 U.S. cities, targeting Chinese military personnel for concealing their identities and entering U.S. universities and research institutions as visiting scholars, while the Consulate General in Houston directed the military scholars’ espionage and intellectual property theft operations in the United States.
The Chinese government accused the U.S. of outrageousness for suddenly demanding the closure of the Consulate General in Houston, and retaliated by forcing the U.S. to close the Consulate General in Chengdu.
Among the Chinese scholars interviewed by the FBI this summer was PLA scholar Tang Donation. After being interviewed, she went into hiding at the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco in June, and was arrested by the FBI when she left the consulate in July. At least four other Chinese military scholars are believed to be facing visa fraud charges in the United States.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said earlier that Chinese spy infiltration of the U.S. is ubiquitous, with nearly half of the approximately 5,000 counterintelligence cases investigated by the FBI linked to China.
The Justice Department said on November 16 that its “China Action Plan” to counter China’s threats to the United States had produced significant results over the past year and that it would continue to work to achieve the campaign’s goal of confronting and deterring illegal and malicious Chinese activities.
Beijing has denied the allegations and accused the U.S. of political persecution and racial discrimination under the China Action Plan.
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