Chinese enrollment in U.S. higher education grew steadily through the Obama years, climbing from under 200,000 in 2011–12 to a peak of 372,532 by 2019–20. By March 2018, alongside that growth, the FBI warned in its bulletin, “China: The Risk to Academia,” that the broader population of international students and scholars in the United States, then numbering 1.4 million, posed a national security exposure. Chinese students were the largest source of that population.
The Bureau warned that a subset of those students and scholars was being used by Beijing as “non-traditional collectors,” exploiting the openness of U.S. research institutions through talent recruitment programs, unsolicited research collaboration offers, and academic visits to advance Chinese military and commercial interests. The bulletin stated that China does not “play by the same rules of academic integrity” as American institutions and called on universities to report suspicious contacts to their local FBI field office.
That assessment fed directly into the Department of Justice’s response. On November 1, 2018, the DOJ launched the China Initiative under Attorney General Jeff Sessions to counter Chinese economic espionage. The initiative was led by Assistant Attorney General John Demers of the National Security Division, alongside a senior FBI executive and five U.S. attorneys.
Hellbound and Down 