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Cold-war-style suspicion of Chinese-American and Chinese academics
- Theodores 7y agoIf 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 7y agoFor 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.
- Chris_Chambers 7y agoI’m not reading one word of this bullshit and neither should anyone else.
- youeeeeeediot 7y agoIn 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 7y agoThe 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 7y agoThere'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.
- hairytrog 7y agoThis 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 7y agoWernher 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
- zeristor 7y agoThey escaped the Soviet army
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoYou 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.
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- dang 7y agoAll: 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.
- MegaButts 7y agohttps://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 7y agoYes! 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 7y agoThat 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.
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- Waterluvian 7y ago
- luckydata 7y agoIt'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-pleads-guilty-to-stealing-glaxosmithkline-trade-secrets/ https://www.biospace.com/article/-jc1n-second-scientist-plea... or https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/ex-coca-cola-engineer-charged-with-stealing-secrets-for-chinese-firm https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/ex-coca-col... 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/081298255X https://www.amazon.com/Cool-War-United-States-Competition/dp...
- lawrenceyan 7y agoNone of those links work. Do you mind reposting ones that do below? It seems that you copy pasted the links from a different comment, but since HN will automatically shorten long links when presenting them, the links you copied end up cut off.
- luckydata 7y agofixed.
- lawrenceyan 7y agoThanks!
- youeeeeeediot 7y agohttps://www.biospace.com/article/-jc1n-second-scientist-pleads-guilty-to-stealing-glaxosmithkline-trade-secrets/ https://www.biospace.com/article/-jc1n-second-scientist-plea... https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/ex-coca-cola-engineer-charged-with-stealing-secrets-for-chinese-firm https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/ex-coca-col...
- thucydidesofusa 7y agoDoes anyone know how Americans are treated in China?
- Chris_Chambers 7y agoThe 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 7y agoWe changed the title to the subtitle. That is routine moderation when titles are baity, as they frequently are. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20subtitle https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- seriouslylying 7y agoYou changed the title to maintain yet another lowkey slam on the current administration. Your top level comment dodges responsibility in typical HN fashion by suggesting you ban accounts equally, when a quick search of threads of this nature shows that to be untrue. Why the charade every single time a controversial topic arises? Why not just admit the bias, if you feel the need to interject, and move on?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- texan 7y ago"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 7y agoI'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.
- stcredzero 7y agoAs 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 7y agoIt 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 7y agoReplace 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 7y agoWell 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...
- threezero 7y agoI find these articles interesting if looked at from a historical standpoint. Imagine an article from 1939 decrying the treatment of German scientists in the US who happen to be sharing information with the Nazi government back home. In the modern version of this, we have an apologist admin on HN changing the article title so no one flinches at its original obvious anti-US slant, there’s no mention of China’s horrrible human rights abuses like concentration camps and organ harvesting, and now there’s discussion rules making sure there’s no US “nationalists” commenting against China. I wonder if people who hated the Nazis in 1939 felt the way I do right now about the pro-China people.
- frequentnapper 7y agoTalk 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 7y agoAmerican 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 7y agoAlso 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.
- yorwba 7y agoAlso 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 7y agoThere was also a Science Magazine news story https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/nih-probe-foreign-ties-has-led-undisclosed-firings-and-refunds-institutions https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/nih-probe-foreign-ti...
- dang 7y agoGood grief. After all that, it turned out to be a dupe. I had no idea!
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- CryptoSpidey 7y agoI 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.
- gamedori 7y agoThis 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 7y agoActually, 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.
- ccrush 7y agoThe 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.