Chinese Scientists in America Under New Wave of Suspicion

FBI scrutiny and visa revocations under President Trump are worrying STEM researchers

- Shen Lu

On March 28, FBI agents raided two homes belonging to Xiaofeng Wang, a computer-science professor at Indiana University Bloomington. Hours later, the university fired him without explanation.

Those events deepened a mystery around Wang, a well-known expert in cybersecurity who had worked at the university for two decades. His faculty page had suddenly gone missing from the university's website weeks earlier.

It later emerged that the university had been investigating Wang over undisclosed alleged China collaborations, though the connection with a Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry remained unclear. The university declined to comment on Wang's firing. It said it was recently made aware of a federal investigation of a faculty member but declined to say more "at the direction of the FBI."

In addition, Wang's wife, Nianli Ma, lost her job as an Indiana University library analyst without being given a reason. Wang and Ma are Chinese citizens with permanent residency in the U.S. Jason Covert, a lawyer representing Wang and his wife, said that neither has been charged with a crime and that they aren't in police custody.

Wang's story has sent a familiar chill through the community of Chinese scientists in the U.S. Many of them fear a renewal of the government suspicion, political pressure and criminal prosecution they faced under the first Trump administration, in the midst of escalating tensions between the government and universities.

Geopolitical competition has eroded once-thriving scientific collaboration between the U.S. and China. In Washington, there is intensifying bipartisan concern over Chinese theft of American intellectual property.

U.S. federal courts in recent years have convicted several individuals of Chinese origin for stealing trade secrets from American companies. Beijing, meanwhile, is pursuing an aggressive campaign to "delete America" from its tech ecosystem and nurture home-grown innovation.