
Cold-war-style suspicion of Chinese-American and Chinese academics - chvid
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3016267/chinese-scientists-guilty-researching-while
======
dang
All: the theme is divisive, but this is a substantive and interesting article
and therefore on topic for HN. If you comment, take care to do so in the
spirit of the site: thoughtfully and curiously. And if you haven't lately,
would you mind reviewing the site guidelines to get a refresher? We've raised
the bar a notch or two.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

I hate to post these admonitions, but there has been an uptick of
nationalistic flamewar everywhere, and that's a problem for HN. It's unwelcome
here, unnecessary regardless of your views, and we ban accounts that post it,
so please don't.

------
stcredzero
As I noted in another comment, state actors change the scale of incentives and
disincentives in academic and corporate IP and data theft. A large corporation
is a fearsome opponent. It never sleeps. It can avoid being tired for many
decades at at time. It can hire an entire squad of private detectives to find
you, and spending tons of money on lawyers is just normal operations for it.
These also apply to large academic institutions, and often the IP and data are
involved with academic/private consortiums. For these reasons, individuals are
usually strongly deterred from such theft.

Add in state actors, however, and the potential cost/benefit equations change.
A strong state actor has the power to shield a person from a multinational's
wrath. It's not hard to steal such information. What's hard is getting away
with it indefinitely.

Disclosure: I'm Asian and my wife was once a Chinese born academic in the US.

~~~
tlear
It is far more then that. State actor has people working for it who will serve
as honey pots, it has people working for it who Will drug you stuff you in a
box and send you back to the country. It has a huge capacity for physical
violence of all kinds. Corps are innocent toddlers compared to nation states.

It is a dual approach, we can shield you and also you parents house will not
burn down “accidentally” plus lenience for that wayward cousin who will get
couple years in comfy prison instead of 9mm to the back of the head.

~~~
stcredzero
Replace most instances of "9mm to the back of the head" with a longer jail
sentence at a more violent prison for the cousin, and you'd also have the US
and other western powers.

~~~
King-Aaron
Well I'd be fairly sure that there some cases of "X attended a meeting and
then suddenly had a mysterious heart attack on the way home" which do happen
within western powers...

~~~
Ill_ban_myself
Emigration tells the whole story here. There’s no need to quibble about who
kills more of their citizens, or who is more repressive.

People are moving west, corporations with low moral standards are moving east.

~~~
wtvanhest
The story is long and complex. I dont know anything about the Chinese side,
but we in the US have amassed the largest prison population on earth, by
percent and absolute numbers.

100 years from now, my kid's kid's will be embarrassed that their grandfather
didn't do more to stop the oppression.

------
youeeeeeediot
In an April speech in New York, FBI director Christopher Wray described the
reason for the scrutiny of ethnic Chinese scientists. “China has pioneered a
societal approach to stealing innovation in any way it can from a wide array
of busi­ness­es, universities and organisations,” he told the Council on
Foreign Relations. Every­one’s in on it, Wray said: China’s intelligence
services; its state-owned and what he called “ostensibly” private
enter­prises; and the 130,000 Chinese graduate students and researchers who
work and study in the US every year. “Put plainly, China seems determined to
steal its way up the economic ladder at our expense.”

This has been going since long before the Trump administration, probably all
the way back to the Clinton one.

~~~
tehjoker
The whole point of a research collaboration on global disease to "Yes! Please!
Learn from, use, and improve our ideas!" The FBI framing this as a quasi-spy
role is damaging human welfare for political purposes, which is their
traditional role going back to their founding under Hoover. The environment in
this country is getting progressively scarier.

~~~
ETHisso2017
There's also the broader question of whether it's morally right to push the US
drug patent regime upon the rest of the world - in this case, before the
patents or IP ever kick in from a legal perspective.

This isn't just a US-vs-China thing. It's also a US-pharma-companies-vs-sick-
people-everywhere thing.

------
MegaButts
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen)

This man wanted to stay in the United States, was kicked out for fear of
national security, and later kickstarted the Chinese space program.

I realize immigration policies are complicated and obviously political, but
the US seems to be going about it in a pretty stupid manner.

~~~
ethbro
Yes! When people want to come to your country to study advanced topics, it's
asinine not to provide the easiest path to citizenship possible for them.

If they stay, you win. If obtain citizenship but return home, they now have a
tie to your country. If they decline citizenship, you've lost nothing.

And from an economic perspective, they're more likely to create opportunities
for those without advanced education.

Yet the historical "Are you willing to become American?" has turned into "Are
you American enough to be American?"

~~~
darkpuma
That analysis assumes that supply for academic opportunity is elastic. Is that
a sound assumption?

Because otherwise, it's not fair to say you've lost nothing when a college
graduate leaves your country.

 _Edit: Response to deleted comment_ : I didn't say anybody would leave the
country because getting citizenship was too easy, that's ridiculous and not a
very charitable read of my comment. I was addressing this in particular:

>If obtain citizenship but return home, they now have a tie to your country.
If they decline citizenship, you've lost nothing.

In the scenario where somebody obtains _or declines_ a citizenship and returns
home, then you've lost something. Whether they take or pass up the citizenship
isn't the matter. _Whatever_ their motivation happens to be for accepting or
declining the citizenship, in _either_ case you've lost something if they
leave the country.

------
CryptoSpidey
I feel like the problem is just the way power is distributed to nation-states
with money. We've got to start working towards a world where nation-states
aren't forced to compete with each other economically--instead where they are
incentivized to work together economically and compete over citizens. Nation-
states serve a purpose, as religion did/does. But the scope of that control
must change as civilization does. I feel in a couple years they may look back
on this age as we do now with the crusades.

------
texan
"A month after resign­ing, she left her husband and two children in the US and
took a job as dean of a school of public health in Shanghai."

Where does her family now live? This seems to say she got a divorce and moved
to China?

~~~
daveFNbuck
I'm pretty sure this just means she moved to China but her family didn't. It's
a bit of an awkward phrasing as it includes "she left her husband" but adding
"in the US" means she just left him behind rather than divorcing him.

------
ccrush
The distinction that is muddied up in the article as well as by many anti-
Trump voices is that, while research in academia is published and open and
supposed to be shared, there is a gray area that spills over into commercial
research into applications of scientific discoveries where the IP is no longer
destined to be openly available, and this research constitutes trades secrets
that could be stolen and monetized by foreign entities at the expense of the
United States. It is this research that has to be protected, and because of
the gray area, many scientists have access to both types of research. It is
very unfortunate that the lines are blurred in the interest of attacking a
president that wants to keep our country's edge in technological advancements.
The article went as far as claiming that Trump's administration might round up
Chinese Americans and Chinese aliens as the Japanese were rounded up and sent
to internment camps during WW2. The whole point is to make Trump into Hitler
at every step, and although this was a more well-written hit piece, it is
still click bait and attacks on the Trump administration. I hate that this
political climate spills over into scientific articles now. The Chinese have
been watched and accused of theft of IP for more than two decades, but it's
only now open season on the current administration because the media loves to
hate Trump. I'm sick and tired of it. The Chinese have stolen plans for
fighter jets, been banned from buying Xeon processors, have been accused of
directly copying the AMD Zen chips via masks instead of producing copies based
on specs like AMD intended during the sale, and many other such things which
either happened or started to happen before Trump took office. To claim that
the increased enforcement of laws and regulations against economic espionage
as a matter of discrimination against Asians which could eventually lead to
WW2-style detention of Chinese nationals and Chinese Americans is purely
incendiary nonsense aimed at attacking a President that aims to secure our
worldwide economic and technological leadership. Anyone who believes this
ought to be ashamed of themselves for falling for this garbage sensationalist
journalism.

~~~
vkou
If this research takes public funding, why the hell are it's proceeds not
public?

Why am I paying tax dollars to fund the competitive advantage of private
firms?

~~~
18pfsmt
So, if a research project takes $3M in funding, and a private company takes
that primary research and spends $300M to produce a derivative product and
takes it to market they should not profit? The National Renewable Energy Lab
has an entire portfolio it is begging private companies to productize.

Taking a product to market is very difficult and raw research is not usable by
the populace in most cases.

~~~
headsoup
This is fine, so long as the $3M funded research is still open and available
to anyone to productionise.

Is that how it works or are private companies funding some of the 'open'
research phase to then privatise (i.e. make secret) the outcomes?

~~~
Ill_ban_myself
If you spend 300$ million in secret research you can realize 1.5 billion in
profit.

The numbers for research where you're forced to make the production research
public mean your competitors can get to market faster and it may mean an
investment of even 3 million isn't worth it.

There are some medicines/procedures/devices where this is the only way to make
the numbers work to sell it.

------
yorwba
Also discussed 17 days ago, when this article appeared in Bloomberg
Businessweek (I guess SCMP has a sharing agreement with them?):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20178100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20178100)

~~~
selimthegrim
There was also a Science Magazine news story

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/nih-probe-foreign-
ti...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/nih-probe-foreign-ties-has-led-
undisclosed-firings-and-refunds-institutions)

------
frequentnapper
Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. With all the advanced
data collection and analysis, can't American intelligence agencies distinguish
spies? Why not leave it to them rather than repeating the same historical
mistakes?

~~~
nradov
American intelligence agencies can't reliably distinguish spies, especially
not without doing the kind of rigorous background check required for a
security clearance. The FBI and NSA aren't omnipotent.

~~~
ryanmercer
Also to add to this, it's kinda hard to detect if someone was indoctrinated
and trained in their home country and then sent here with crystal clear, mid
to long-term, instructions on what to do and how to report back.

To report back they don't even necessarily need to transmit data or meet
someone in front of 37 security cameras with a big envelope that says "secret
stolen plans" in screaming red letters. They can slowly lift data over the
course of weeks, months or years from whatever they are here to learn about
and use a dead drop... go to the Goodwill a mile from their apartment and
leave an SD card behind the third row of records between 2 and 2:05pm, or
upload encrypted fragments via a different public WiFi once a week, or mail an
SD card to a series of memorized addresses disguised as eBay purchases.

Old school tradecraft makes you effectively invisible in a digital world as
long as you are cautious in how you collect data and get around any security
measures at the school/employer you are attempting to steal data from. If
you're in a position to be accessing the data as a
student/researcher/employee, especially if you are in a position to actively
manipulate that data as part of your role, unless you are being stripped
searched and all USB ports have been rendered inert, if you're patient you can
take all the data you want and unless you go telling people, you're probably
not going to get caught, especially by some federal agency that can't read
your mind.

------
Theodores
If you were a young Chinese person, why would you study in an American
university?

Under normal circumstances you would want to see America. You would want to be
with the best to get a bit of paper at the end from a top notch place. The
world would then be your oyster. You would know people, you would know what
America is like and how nice American people are (under normal circumstances).

But what happens if you know you won't be welcomed? What if you had got wind
of this hysteria going on?

You go somewhere else.

It might not be America but at least you could do your degree without people
muttering 'Chinese Whispers' (!) about how you are there just to harvest
people's IP and steal their state organs.

If English is the language to learn then there are plenty of universities in
England that will gladly take Chinese money. The hysteria hasn't sullied the
atmosphere in the UK yet. Then there are Scandinavian countries, Germany and
other places where you get English going on in science subjects. Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa and Canada are good options too.

Then there are the non-English speaking countries that roll the red carpet out
for China. Anything belt and road. Russia. There are plenty of places. Now
there are options and the idea of studying in the U.S. is not really looking
that exciting. Plus, the more you look into it there can be better places to
get a particular degree than one of the Ivy League big names.

This could precipitate a serious decline in the international standing of U.S.
universities. If departments are not getting the big bucks coming in from
Chinese admissions they will have to get students from elsewhere. The bar gets
lowered in the process and it becomes a downward spiral.

The only American cars of interest internationally are the ones by Tesla.
Nobody wants an American car. In Europe we used to imitate American cars
albeit cut down to cheap size. But, nowadays, Tesla aside, nobody in Europe
would consider an American car as a serious proposition. And there isn't
anything Detroit can do to change that.

If American academia gets to go in a similar downward spiral then there is no
way back out of it. American universities could become the preserve of
American rich kids with no intake from Asia or elsewhere. Then the ambitious
U.S. students would have to be studying in Europe to get an education that was
a cut above, or, even in China!

This is a slippery slope that we are on, all because of a minority that want
to forego hospitality, trust, warmth and international spirit and succumb to
fear, nationalism, hysteria and rumour-mongering.

~~~
joey_bob
For undergraduate studies, it would be very surprising if American
universities would begin to jeopardize the cash cow of udnergraduate Chinese
students over IP concerns, considering their refusal to do so over student
integrity violations. For their professors and administration, American
universities have a serious problem with conflicts of interest. From what it
sounds like in the article, Wu Xifeng was already working for someone else,
and collecting a paycheck from MD Anderson by the time she left.

------
hairytrog
This reminds me of Nazi era exodus of Jews. Strategically, it's not smart to
marginalize or eliminate a large portion of your engineering/scientist class.
It certainly contributed to Germany losing the war. Escaped German and
European European scientists and engineers were crucial to the Manhattan
project and later to ICMB and NASA rocket development. Indeed, without their
Jewish and non-Aryan scientists, German nuclear efforts were almost comically
bad. We couldn't have done it without the Nazis...

Discrimination of Chinese scientists could have the exact opposite effect of
preventing supposed Chinese IP theft. It risks pushing out top Chinese talent
who will return to China and develop atomic bomb- level breakthroughs.

Much better alternative - offer them top jobs with excellent pay and recruit
from top Chinese university programs.

~~~
imjustsaying
Wernher von Braun and the 1600 Germans who were taken out of Germany by the US
in Operation Paperclip to do 'ICMB and NASA rocket development' were also (and
it seems you're implying exclusively) 'Jewish and non-Aryan scientists'?
That's not what I'm seeing in the wiki, correct if it's wrong instead of
downvoting please.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
You shouldn't be getting downvoted as it's the much more accurate
representation of the history that led to the rocket programmes.

As near as damn it the whole Nazi V2 team, equipment and production was
shipped to the US. Wernher von Braun, the scientists and engineers, and
hundreds of train wagons filled with everything they could carry; engines,
components, fuel, tools, you name it.

Japan's Unit 731 got the outrageous end of war deal to get some information to
the US though.

------
Chris_Chambers
The actual title is “Chinese scientists guilty of ‘researching while Asian’ in
Trump’s America”. It was also submitted with that title. Pretty slimy of the
admins to change it just to rationalize keeping the submission up. The title
is obvious bullshit because no one in Trump’s administration would have a
problem with Japanese scientists “researching while Asian”, because Japan is
our ally. Fronald Toompf destroyed yet again, right guys? Stop fucking turning
this site into reddit please.

~~~
dang
We changed the title to the subtitle. That is routine moderation when titles
are baity, as they frequently are.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20subtitle&sort=byDate...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20subtitle&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0)

------
luckydata
It's not like it's hard to see either, there's routinely news of Chinese
scientists and engineers caught with some kind of industrial secret stolen
from their employer trying to go back to China in a hurry. Every time it's
mentioned people on HN react like some grand conspiracy theory was unveiled
while it takes 15 seconds on google to find examples like:

[https://www.biospace.com/article/-jc1n-second-scientist-
plea...](https://www.biospace.com/article/-jc1n-second-scientist-pleads-
guilty-to-stealing-glaxosmithkline-trade-secrets/)

or

[https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/ex-coca-
col...](https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/ex-coca-cola-
engineer-charged-with-stealing-secrets-for-chinese-firm)

it's pervasive and it's stupid to think it will stop on its own. China has
been at war with us for quite a while, we just failed to recognize it because
it is convenient for many not to do so, but we should behave accordingly.

Edit: since my comment was called "inflammatory and nationalistic" I'm going
to add a link to a book that explains the war ongoing between China and the
US, from an author that's very much not either of those things:

[https://www.amazon.com/Cool-War-United-States-
Competition/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Cool-War-United-States-
Competition/dp/081298255X)

~~~
dang
This is inflammatory and snarky and exaggerated ("China has been at war with
us") enough to count as nationalistic flamebait. As I said above, we don't
want that here. Please make your substantive points without it.

~~~
luckydata
That's your opinion, you're free to have it but calling mine "inflammatory and
nationalistic" doesn't make your better.

I happen to believe (and most of our intelligence does too) that China has
been studiously and purposefully stolen everything they could get their hands
on for the last 20 years or so with the clear objective of gaining a military
advantage. That's what a war is, and it's a very well substantiated position.

Also pretty funny you call me a nationalist, I wasn't even born in the US.

~~~
markdown
> I happen to believe (and most of our intelligence does too) that China has
> been studiously and purposefully stolen everything they could get their
> hands on for the last 20 years or so with the clear objective of gaining a
> military advantage

The US (NSA) has been stealing secrets from a significant percentage of the
world population for years. Snowden showed us that. China stealing from a few
corporations makes them angels in comparison. Further, the US slaughters
hundreds of thousands in ACTUAL wars in the middle east over the past 20yrs to
gain a military and economic advantage over the rest of the world.

Stop making it seem like China is some big bogeyman when the US has been the
bogeyman all along.

~~~
deogeo
From a US perspective, US misdeeds don't make China any less of a threat. Is
the US supposed to react as "Oh they're waging a bit of a trade war on us, but
we've sinned as well, so lets let them keep it up"?

~~~
markdown
No, of course not. I'm not talking about how the US govt should react. I'm
saying that armchair critics on the sidelines (referring to the grandparent)
painting China as evil for some corporate espionage is pretty naive given that
the US is guilty of far worse.

~~~
luckydata
China is "evil" for a whole series of different reasons, its blatant disregard
for human rights and life on a massive scale is a good start.

I have my gripes with US policies (may I remind you I'm not even a citizen by
birth?) and we're definitely seeing a slide towards an even more overt fascism
than ever before, but it's still an avoidable risk compared to the very
present danger a stronger China poses to all democracies.

To be blunt, I don't want to live in a world where China has any more power
than it has right now, because we're MUCH better off in any version of what we
have in the west than anything China has to offer.

I like my civil liberties, I like to be able to express dissent and to protest
without being ground into a pulp by a tank, and I like to express politically
antagonistic opinions without having my organs harvested after a summary
execution.

------
gamedori
This seems to be a relatively simple case of tit-for-tat. Chinese scholars
were welcomed in the US, but a significant minority of them have abused their
welcome (defected). It is not all of them, but it was systemic enough to lose
a lot of the US technological edge. In order to cut its losses, the US is now
defecting on educating those students and researchers. You may say this is
very unfair to the students, but in Chinese culture it is not uncommon to
punish the family members for crimes of their relative.

~~~
gamedori
Actually, having read the Science Advances article, it seems simpler than
this. Institutions are being asked to warn their foreign researchers (not just
Chinese) to be open about other contracts and commitments,and firing those who
are deceitful. Seems to be a very clear case of breach of contract being
remedied.

