SAN FRANCISCO, June 17 (Reuters) – For Chinese brain researcher Song Chen, a visiting scholar at Stanford University when she was arrested last July on a visa fraud charge, a court hearing last month in San Francisco brought some hope.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup expressed skepticism about the FBI’s failure to inform Song of her rights when she was first interrogated, calling its tactics a “gimmick.” He’d previously rejected requests from the prosecution that evidence in her case be kept secret on national security grounds, a decision the U.S. government is appealing.
But Song, who sat tense and teary-eyed through the proceedings, is still a long way from a trial date as the case winds through the courts. She also has been charged with lying to investigators and destroying evidence as part of an alleged effort to conceal ties to the Chinese military.
Song, who works for the Xi Diaoyutai Hospital in Beijing, a military facility, pleaded not guilty to the charges and denies being an active-duty member of China’s military. She is currently free on bail.
Her case is one of at least five visa fraud prosecutions of university researchers launched last year as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s “China Initiative,” a three-year-old effort aimed at preventing the transfer of U.S. technology to China. All the Chinese scientists have pleaded not guilty to falsifying visa applications to conceal military ties as well as other charges.
Two of those arrested – Wang Xin, a visiting medical researcher at the University of California San Francisco, and Zhao Kaikai, a PhD student in artificial intelligence at Indiana University Bloomington – are still in jail awaiting trial.
If convicted, the scientists could face a lengthy prison sentence, though lawyers for two of them say it is more likely they would spend a short time in jail, if any time at all, before being sent back to China.
Civil liberties groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Asian Law Caucus are increasingly concerned about the visa fraud cases, which they say reflect anti-China bias. Defense lawyers say their clients’ real crime is running afoul of U.S.-China politics.
“The government’s ‘China Initiative’ has been framed in dangerous, over-broad terms since its inception, casting widespread suspicion on people of Chinese descent,” said Patrick Toomey, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU. “The initiative was supposed to combat the theft of trade secrets, but this case, like so many others, contains no such allegations.”
A senior DOJ official said the prosecutions were based on “conduct,” not race. When academics are charged with visa fraud, the DOJ isn’t necessarily expecting to later find evidence of espionage or theft, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Rather, the official said, the goal is to prevent actions that are “pernicious and ultimately could lead to theft.”
China’s foreign ministry told Reuters in a statement that the visa fraud cases amounted to “political persecution.” A total of nearly 300 Chinese students were stopped at U.S. airports for interrogations as they were leaving the country between May and September of last year, the statement added.
The China Initiative was launched under former President Donald Trump, and all five arrests occurred a year ago when U.S.-China relations were at a nadir. President Joe Biden’s administration currently has no plans to pull back, the DOJ official said.
