Stanford professors urge US to end anti-China program

A group of Stanford University professors has asked the US Justice Department to stop looking for Chinese spies at US universities, joining an effort by human rights groups to end a Trump administration program they said caused racial profiling and was terrorizing some scientists.

The "China Initiative" launched in late 2018 aimed to prevent alleged US technology theft by China but has since "deviated significantly from its claimed mission," according to the September 8 letter, which was signed by 177 Stanford faculty members and made public by them on Monday.

"It is harming the United States' research and technology competitiveness and it is fueling biases that, in turn, raise concerns about racial profiling," the letter said.

The Justice Department has published details of at least 27 cases related to the initiative, with results including some guilty pleas, some cases dropped and some ongoing.

Professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University were among those charged, as were five Chinese scientists who were visiting scholars last year – although those charges were dropped in July.