On November 1, 2018 then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the launch of the “China Initiative” – a whole-of-government effort ostensibly designed to thwart espionage and technology theft by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Chinese American groups and activists immediately denounced the program as racially biased and its investigations improperly predicated, and in 2021 two studies provided them with ample proof that their allegations were correct.
The first was a study showing how rare it was for Chinese Americans to actually engage in espionage on behalf of the PRC. The second study chronicled the extremely high number of “China Initiative” cases that resulted in acquittals or dismissed cases. In late February 2022, the Assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen announced the Department was ending the program, with Olsen telling a George Mason University crowd that he had “concluded that this initiative was not the right approach” to combatting PRC espionage and technology theft.
Three months later, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a report that dealt in part with the question of whether or not PRC intelligence organizations prioritized the recruitment of Chinese Americans for spying or tech theft. That report, which was mandated by Congress, made a categorical statement about PRC intelligence asset targeting and recruitment strategy:
“It is the IC’s assessment that while the PRC promotes the false narrative that individuals of Chinese descent owe some allegiance to the PRC, neither race nor ethnicity is the primary criterion utilized by the PRC’s intelligence services in their recruitment of intelligence assets.”
But is this true? A recent trove of documents released to the Cato Institute via a Freedom of Information Act request leaves the question of whether the PRC targets Chinese Americans as potential agents.
Hellbound and Down 