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      ‘You’re treated like a spy’: US accused of racial profiling over China Initiative

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      ‘You’re treated like a spy’: US accused of racial profiling over China InitiativeTrump programme to ‘counter Chinese national security threats’ continues to spread fear among academics with links to China It was sometime before 7am on 21 May 2015 when Xiaoxing Xi, a physics professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, was woken by people pounding on his front door. Still not fully dressed, he opened the door to be confronted by about 12 armed FBI agents.The agents burst into Xi’s house, running about, shouting “FBI, FBI”. They pointed their guns at his wife and two daughters and ordered them to walk out of their bedrooms with their hands raised. Xi was handcuffed and arrested in front of his family. His alleged crime? Four counts of wire fraud for passing sensitive US technology to China, the country of his birth. “Overnight, I was painted as a Chinese spy all over the news and internet and faced the possibility of up to 80 years in prison and a $1m fine,” he wrote in a statement to the US House of Representatives last year.Four months after his arrest, the case collapsed before reaching trial. Xi, who came to the US from China in 1989 at the age of 32, was told through his lawyer that the US justice department (DoJ) had dismissed the case after “new information came to the attention of the government”.On Monday, nearly seven years after that raid, Xi, 64, asked a federal appeals court in Philadelphia to reinstate his claims for damages against the US government and the FBI. He and his family claim that they had been “wrongly” investigated and prosecuted in 2015.The Xi family also wants a declaration that the FBI violated their fourth and fifth amendment rights. They say they have “clear evidence” the FBI violated their constitutional rights, and that years later they are still dealing with the trauma of the ordeal.“If we can’t hold the government accountable now, there will be little to stop the government from profiling other Asian American scientists and ruining more innocent people’s lives in the future,” Xi said. “The government is not entitled to do what they have done to me and my family.”This is not Xi’s first attempt to take on the US government. Last April, a lower court dismissed nine of his 10 claims, which included allegations the FBI knowingly made false statement. The court also rejected his claim that the FBI’s action was “discriminatory”.But the lower court has yet to rule on Xi’s 10th claim, which challenges the US government’s surveillance of Xi and his family. The DOJ declined to comment on the lawsuit. The FBI has been contacted by the Guardian for comment on the Xi case.Xi’s ordeal occurred under the Obama administration, but his latest attempt to secure compensation comes amid a wide-ranging debate in Washington about how the US should compete with China. Stories like Xi’s have also been emerging as more American scientists – in particular those of Chinese origin – are being caught up in the geopolitical tensions. In 2018, the Trump administration launched a China Initiative to “[reflect] the strategic priority of countering Chinese national security threats and reinforce the president’s overall national security strategy”. The DoJ website boasts a series of examples – the latest, from 5 November, detailing an alleged attempt by a Chinese intelligence officer to steal trade secrets.Last week, the FBI’s director, Christopher Wray, alleged “there is just no country that presents a broader threat to our ideas, our innovation, and our economic security than China”. He claimed his bureau opens a counterintelligence case against China “about twice a day”.Opponents of the China Initiative argue it creates a pervasive atmosphere of fear among American academics who used to, or still have, links to China. Until recently, they were seen by many as a bridge between the two nations.Judy Chu, a California Democrat and the first Chinese American woman in US Congress, said the China Initiative is an instrument for “racial profiling”. “[The government] has turned it into a means to terrorise Chinese scientists and engineers. Something has gone dramatically wrong,” she told US media in December.Responding to concerns, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, said to Congress in October that the DoJ would review the programme. Opposition to the initiative has grown louder in recent months. In December one former DoJ official said it had “drifted and, in some significant ways, lost its focus”.In a statement to the Guardian, a DOJ spokesperson said: “Consistent with the Attorney General’s direction, the Department is reviewing our approach to countering threats posed by the PRC government. We anticipate completing the review and providing additional information in the coming weeks.”Zhigang Suo, a Chinese-born Harvard academic who, like Xi, is also a naturalised US citizen, said the heated atmosphere was having an adverse affect. “Of course people are upset about China, but I can see it takes two people to bicker. And I’m not a fan of the juvenile behaviour on either side,” he said. “In the past, very few fellow Chinese Americans would even think of leaving the US. But now, I can tell you some of the top Chinese American scientists have either left or are thinking about leaving.”For most of the three decades since settling in the US, Suo was not interested in politics. “My wife is a political junkie, but I wasn’t interested in it at all,” he said. But on 14 January 2021, the arrest of his best friend, Gang Chen, a fellow Chinese American scientist, changed that. Chen, a Chinese-born mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was charged with hiding his links to China. The charges were later dismissed, but the incident turned Suo from an apolitical science nerd into a political activist. “Before [the China Initiative], you were innocent until proven guilty. Now, you are guilty until you prove you are innocent,” Suo said. “I fear this is the start of a slow process of brain drain for America. Historically, brain drain precedes the decline of great nations.”In a recent interview with the New York Times, Chen, who has now been released, said: “You work hard, you have good output, you build a reputation … The government gets what they want, right? But in the end, you’re treated like a spy. That just breaks your heart. It breaks your confidence.”Supporters of the China Initiative argue that this China-focused programme is not completely without merit. They point to the recent case of a Harvard chemistry professor, Charles Lieber, who, in December,was found guilty of six felony counts, including failure to disclose his associations and funding from a China-based university and the country’s controversial talent programme.But that same month, a Bloomberg analysis showed that among 50 indictments announced or unsealed since the programme’s inception, “only 20% of the cases allege economic espionage, and most of those are unresolved. Just three claim that secrets were handed over to Chinese agents.”Xi said the nightmare experience seven years ago interrupted his “American dream”. Although the charges were quickly dropped and his university position reinstated, his career has been damaged nevertheless, he said. “My research programme is now much smaller… I’m scared of applying for funding because as long as I do anything imperfectly, it could one day come back to haunt me.”Yet, despite the ordeal, Xi said he had also learned an important lesson. “If we – Americans of Chinese descent – want our environment improved, we need to speak out and fight for our rights. This is how democracy operates.”TopicsUS newsChinaUS politicsUS foreign policyRaceAsia PacificfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Trump risked disaster with Abbas praise in key Israel meeting, ambassador says

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      Trump risked disaster with Abbas praise in key Israel meeting, ambassador saysIn new book, David Friedman recounts private meeting with Israeli president in which Trump also knocked Netanyahu – and how he says he turned his man around Meeting then-Israeli president Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem in May 2017, Donald Trump stunned advisers by criticising the then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for being unwilling to seek peace while Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, was “desperate” for a deal.‘Apartheid state’: Israel’s fears over image in US are coming to passRead moreThe comment “knocked everyone off their chairs”, David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, writes in a new book.“Although the meeting was private and off the record, we all envisioned a headline tomorrow that Trump had praised Abbas and criticised Netanyahu – the worst possible dynamic for the president’s popularity or for the prospects of the peace process.“Fortunately, and incredibly, the event wasn’t leaked.”Friedman now describes the incident, and how he says he changed Trump’s mind, in Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, a memoir which will be published next week by Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins. The Guardian obtained a copy.Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer was a hugely controversial choice for ambassador. As well as being a hardline pro-settler rightwinger, during the 2016 campaign he called Barack Obama an antisemite and J Street, a liberal US Jewish group, “worse than kapos”, Jewish prisoners who worked as guards in Nazi concentration camps.He was confirmed as ambassador by a 52-46 Senate vote. US ambassadors to Israel are usually confirmed unanimously.In his book, he says the “worse than kapos” remark was not a political or policy mistake but a tactical one, as it gave ammunition to critics in the Senate.Describing four “murder boards”, sessions in which nominees are grilled over potential problems, he says he first said he used the controversial phrase “because I felt that J Street had betrayed the Jewish people”.That, he writes, caused a “firestorm of reaction” and he was told he could not speak that way. His settled-on answer was: “In the heat of a political campaign I allowed my rhetoric to get the best of me. I regret these comments and assure you that if confirmed, my remarks will be measured and diplomatic.”Describing his confirmation process, Friedman reproduces private conversations with Democratic senators including Kirsten Gillibrand of New York (a “bad joke”), Cory Booker of New Jersey (“delightful” in person, only, Friedman writes, to turn on him in hearings), and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader.Friedman says he had donated to Schumer and the two New Yorkers spoke amicably before Friedman made a pitch for his vote, which he said would send “a strong message of bipartisanship on Israel, which you have advocated on numerous occasions”.Schumer, he says, smiled and answered: “I’m not giving Trump the win. Sorry.”Friedman also recounts an angry meeting with Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, who he accuses of “siding with terrorists over one of America’s strongest allies”.But his description of the meeting between Trump and Rivlin and how Friedman says he turned his president round makes for more surprising reading, not least in how it appears to show how eager Trump was for a deal.Friedman describes how during Trump’s next meeting, with Netanyahu, he manoeuvred all present into viewing a “two-minute collection of Abbas’s speeches that I thought was worth watching”.The tape contained “two minutes of Abbas honouring terrorists, extolling violence, and vowing never to accept anything less than Israel’s total defeat”.“After the tape ended,” Friedman writes, “the president said, ‘Wow, is that the same guy I met in Washington last month? He seemed like such a sweet, peaceful guy.’“The tape had clearly made an impact.”Friedman writes that he was rebuked by Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state, and HR McMaster, Trump’s second national security adviser.“They thought it was a cheap propaganda trick,” he writes. He told them, he writes, “I work for the president, and nobody else … I am going to make sure that he is well informed so that he gets Israel policy right.”Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new bookRead moreFriedman emphasises his role in such policy, prominently including closeness to Netanyahu; support for Israeli settlers on Palestinian land; cutting aid to Palestinians; recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and moving the US embassy there; and diplomacy that led to the Abraham Accords, the normalisation of Israeli relations with four Arab countries.Aides to Trump, Steve Bannon famously among them, have often suffered from being seen to claim too much credit for his successes. Friedman is sure to repeatedly praise Trump, while bragging of how close to “the boss” he became.Nonetheless, his description of Trump’s private meeting with Rivlin – behaviour Friedman says would have been embarrassing had it been leaked – could prove embarrassing itself.Trump has been repeatedly burned by books on his time in power, even those written by loyalists like Friedman.In December, the Guardian was first to report that Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, described how the president tested positive for Covid-19 before his first debate with Joe Biden – and how the result was covered up.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpBenjamin NetanyahuIsraelMahmoud AbbasTrump administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      US Senate panel close to approving ‘mother of all sanctions’ against Russia

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      US Senate panel close to approving ‘mother of all sanctions’ against RussiaNegotiations for package of sanctions against Putin ‘on the one-yard line’, says Bob Menendez of foreign relations committee

      Opinion: Russia’s phony war is playing out as surreal theatre
      The leaders of the Senate foreign relations committee said on Sunday they were on the verge of approving “the mother of all sanctions” against Vladimir Putin, warning there would be no appeasement as the Russian president contemplates an invasion of Ukraine.UK to bring in measures to allow for tougher sanctions on Russia, says TrussRead more“We cannot have a Munich moment again,” the panel’s Democratic chair, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, told CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the 1938 agreement by which allies ceded parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, believing it would stave off war.“Putin will not stop if he believes the west will not respond,” Menendez said. “We saw what he did in 2008 in Georgia, we saw what he did in 2014 in pursuit of Crimea. He will not stop.”Menendez said he believed bipartisan negotiations for severe sanctions were “on the one-yard line”, despite disagreements with Republicans over whether measures should be imposed before or after any Russian invasion. The UK government promised to ramp up sanctions against Putin and his associates.Tensions on the Ukraine border continued to escalate with Reuters reporting the Russian military build-up included supplies of blood in anticipation of casualties. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, told Fox News Sunday: “Putin has a lot of options available to him if he wants to further invade Ukraine, and he can execute some of those options imminently. It could happen really, honestly, at any time.”Seeking to show bipartisan resolve, Menendez gave CNN a joint interview with his committee’s ranking Republican, James Risch of Wisconsin.Menendez said: “There is an incredible bipartisan resolve for support of Ukraine, and an incredibly strong bipartisan resolve to have severe consequences for Russia if it invades, and in some cases for what it has already done.“We are building on the legislation that both Senator Risch wrote independently, and I wrote, which I called the mother of all sanctions. It’s to include a variety of elements, massive sanctions against the most significant Russian banks, crippling to their economy, Russia sovereign debt. These are sanctions beyond any that we have ever levied before.”Risch said talks had been a “24 hour-a-day effort for the last several days” in an attempt to reach agreement over sanctions timing and content, and that he was optimistic.“That’s a work in progress,” Risch said, when pressed over discussions about pre-emptive sanctions or measures to be taken in the event of an invasion. “[But] I’m more than cautiously optimistic that when we get back to DC tomorrow that we’re going to be moving forward.”Menendez said he believed western allies did not have to wait to start penalising Putin.“There are some sanctions that could take place up front because of what Russia has already done, cyber attacks on Ukraine, false flag operations, the efforts to undermine the Ukrainian government internally,” he said.“But then the devastating sanctions that ultimately would crush Russia’s economy, and the continuing lethal aid that we are going to send, means Putin has to decide how many body bags of Russian sons are going to return to Russia.“The sanctions we’re talking about would come later on if he invades, some sanctions would come up front for what has been done already, but the lethal aid will travel no matter what.”Risch criticized the stance of several far-right figures, including the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie, who have questioned why the US is backing Ukraine and opposing Russia. Carlson said “it makes sense” that Putin “just wants to keep his western border secure” by opposing moves by Ukraine to join Nato.“We side always with countries that are democracies, and certainly there isn’t going to be a truce committed in that regard,” Risch said.“But the people who were saying that we shouldn’t be engaged in this at all are going to be singing a very different tune when they go to fill up their car with gas, if indeed there is an invasion. There are going to be sanctions that are going to be crippling to Russia, it is going to cripple their oil production. And as we all know, Russia is simply a gas station that is thinly disguised masquerading as a country. It is going to have a devastating effect on the economy around the world.”UK ready to commit extra forces to Nato allies as Russia tension mountsRead moreOn NBC’s Meet the Press, Dick Durbin, co-chair of the Senate Ukraine caucus, addressed concerns aired by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday that growing rhetoric over the crisis was causing panic and destabilising his country’s economy.His comments followed a call with Joe Biden that Ukraine officials said “did not go well”.“Any decision about the future of Ukraine will be made by Ukraine,” said Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. “It won’t be made in Moscow or in Washington, in the European Union or in Belarus. It’s their future and their fate and their decision as far as that is concerned.”The caucus co-chair, Republican Rob Portman of Ohio, who is also on the foreign relations committee, told NBC he believed Putin had underestimated the unity of Nato and others.“One thing Vladimir Putin has done successfully is he has strengthened the transatlantic alliance and countries around the world who are looking at this and saying, ‘We cannot let this stand, we cannot let this happen’,” Portman said.“For the first time in nearly 80 years we could have a major and very bloody conflict in Europe unless we stand up together and push back, and so far so good.”TopicsUkraineRussiaUS foreign policyUS national securityUS militaryBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Can Biden prevent a war with Russia? Politics Weekly podcast

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      Jonathan Freedland and Julian Borger discuss Joe Biden’s strategy when it comes to potential war with Russia over Ukraine, as well as some potentially good news at home for the president as he gets the chance to nominate a liberal pick to the supreme court

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Archive: BBC, WION, CSPAN, CBS Buy tickets for Hettie Judah’s Guardian livestreamed conversation with the artist Lubaina Himid. Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com. Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts. More

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      The Biden doctrine: Ukraine gaffe sums up mixed year of foreign policy

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      The Biden doctrine: Ukraine gaffe sums up mixed year of foreign policy On Russia and Putin, the president said the quiet part loud. Re-engagement has been welcomed but the exit from Afghanistan was a disaster. Analysts see much to do to rebuild US credibilityJoe Biden marked his first anniversary in office with a gaffe over Ukraine that undid weeks of disciplined messaging and diplomatic preparation.Russian ships, tanks and troops on the move to Ukraine as peace talks stallRead moreThe president’s suggestion that a “minor incursion” by Russia might split Nato over how to respond sent the White House into frantic damage limitation mode.Officials insisted Biden had been referring to cyber attacks and paramilitary activities and not Russian troops crossing the border. That failed to entirely calm nerves in Kyiv and other European capitals, especially as Biden also raised eyebrows by predicting that Vladimir Putin would “move in” to Ukraine because “he has to do something” and would probably prevail.The analysis of Nato’s weaknesses and Putin’s intentions was no doubt widely shared but Biden had said the quiet part loud, contradicting what his own officials had been saying. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, had just been telling Foreign Policy that one of the great successes of the Biden administration was that “the 30 allies of Nato [were] speaking with one voice in the Russia-Ukraine crisis”.Aides who have shadowed Biden through his long career as senator and vice-president are used to his prolix ways, his tendency to draw on his deep foreign policy expense to over-explain, but the stakes are immeasurably greater as a president, trying to stare down Putin as Europe stands on the threshold of war.The stumble distracted from some of the foreign policy achievements of Biden’s first year – the mending of transatlantic ties, the bolstering of US support for the embattled government in Kyiv and the development of a consistent policy towards Moscow – which combined a openness to talks with a readiness to inflict punitive measures and a refusal to be divided from Nato allies.None of those gains were a given in US foreign policy after four years of Donald Trump, a president who frequently put domestic political and business advantage ahead of strategic national interests, particularly when it came to Russia. Mending alliances, returning to multilateralism and restoring predictability to US policy after the volatile Trump era is widely regarded as Biden’s greatest success so far in foreign policy.His claim on taking office that “America is back” was backed up by a quick deal to extend the New Start treaty in Russia and thereby salvage the only major arms control agreement to survive Trump. The US rejoined the Paris climate accord and the United Nations Human Rights Council, re-engaged with major powers in nuclear talks with Iran, and convened a virtual Summit for Democracy in December.All those steps were in line with a broad strategy which Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based Institute of International Affairs, describes as a Biden doctrine.“I think it’s a strategic reorientation towards competition/conflict with China and, the other side of that coin, strengthening relationships with partners in Europe and in Asia, both bilaterally and multilaterally,” Tocci said. “And relying less on the military instrument in order to pursue US foreign policy goals.”The Ukraine stumble was not the first time that strategy has been impaired by its execution. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was intended to be a decisive break with the past, extricating the US from its longest war so it could focus on its most important geopolitical challenge, the rapid rise of China.The departure turned to chaos when the Afghan army, which the US had spent $83m and 20 years trying to build, collapsed in a few days in the face of a Taliban offensive. The scenes of desperate Afghans trying to cling to departing US planes, some dying in the attempt, are an inescapable part of Biden’s legacy.Biden has argued he was boxed in by the Doha agreement the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in February 2020, under which the US was due to leave by May 2021. Biden was able to stretch that deadline by four months but maintained that staying any longer would have led to renewed attacks on US troops.Nathan Sales, an acting under secretary of state in the Trump administration, argued that the Doha deal was no longer binding on Biden, and he could have left a force to maintain US leverage.“When one side of an agreement breaches it serially and flagrantly like the Taliban did, I think the Biden administration would have been well within its rights to say: ‘We’re not bound by it either,’” said Sales, now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.Current US officials argue that whether the US declared the Taliban had been in violation or not, there would have been renewed attacks on US troops, forcing a decision to cut and run or send large-scale reinforcements. The status quo, they say, was not sustainable.Putin, a ‘rogue male’ on the rampage, threatens to start a war no one wants | Simon Tisdall Read moreEven considering the constraints imposed by the previous administration, the withdrawal was a fiasco. US planners failed to anticipate the speed of the collapse even though a government watchdog, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, had warned in 2021 that without US contractors to service planes and helicopters, the Afghan air force would no longer be able to function, depriving troops on the ground of a key advantage.For Afghans who worked with the US and its allies, and for the country’s women and girls, the departure seemed like a betrayal, raising a serious question mark over the administration’s claims to have restored human rights to the heart of US foreign policy.Its record in that regard was already mixed.On one hand, the administration had taken a firm stand against China’s mass persecution of Muslim Uyghurs, declaring it a genocide. Furthermore, the assembly of a coalition of some 130 countries to establish a global minimum tax was, according to Matt Duss, foreign affairs adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, “a step toward addressing global economic inequality which is one of the drivers of conflict and authoritarianism”.“It’s an important first step and a courageous one,” Duss said. He also pointed to the sanctions against surveillance companies like the Israeli NSO group, whose software was used by authoritarian regimes to target dissidents.“​​That was a very consequential move, and there has been a massive pressure campaign trying to get them to roll it back, but they’ve stood firm,” he said.However, the steps taken against the Saudi monarchy for the heavy civilian toll from its air war in Yemen and the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi felt well short of what human rights campaigners and progressive Democrats had hoped for. The Biden administration continued to sell Riyadh substantial quantities of advanced weaponry.“We’ve basically returned to the traditional US approach of supporting human rights in countries that don’t buy our weapons,” Duss said. “I very much hope that changes.”‘A lot of bad blood’Another way in which the manner of the US exit from Afghanistan undermined the administration’s wider objectives was by alienating European allies, who felt left out of a decision they were obliged to follow.“The pull-out really caused a lot of bad blood unnecessarily,” Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said. “You can call it the root cause of unhappiness within the alliance.”The formation in September of Aukus, a partnership with the UK and Australia to help the latter acquire nuclear-powered submarines, was another sweeping move in the pivot towards Asia.Confusion over UK claim that Putin plans coup in UkraineRead moreBut the protagonists had omitted to inform France, who discovered on the same day that their contract to sell Australia diesel submarines had been cancelled. Biden was forced to acknowledge the “clumsy” way it had been handled, and the rift clouded bilateral relations for months.Putin’s threat to Ukraine has helped rally the transatlantic alliance but as Biden revealed in his own public reflections, there are still serious divisions below the surface, limiting his room for manoeuvre.The president’s freedom of action on other global issues, like making progress in climate action or finding a nuclear compromise with Iran, will be hindered still further if Republicans gain control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections. In that case, the administration’s record until now, mixed as it is, may prove to be the high point of the Biden doctrine.TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS foreign policyUS national securityUS militaryUS politicsUkrainefeaturesReuse this content More