The nightmare of a chemistry professor seemed to have finally come to an end.
It's been five years since FBI agents led the leech, also known as Franklin, from his home in Lawrence, Kansas. Dr. Tao, the first professor to be arrested in a Trump-era program aimed at fighting China's economic espionage, was accused of hiding ties with Chinese universities while he was conducting federally funded research at the University of Kansas, where he was in office.
In July he won a legal battle. The federal court of appeals overturned the final conviction in his case. His wife, Hongpen, recalled in an interview that she thought her husband would eventually return to his lab, and their family was able to restore some similarity to normal life.
However, the University of Kansas has not revived him.
A Chinese citizen and permanent resident of the United States, Dr. Tao is currently suing his former employer for illegally dismissal. He accused him of illegally monitoring him on behalf of federal agents and accusing him of violating his own teacher disciplinary policy by terminating him before his criminal case concludes.
“The university has allowed them to participate in the horror and racist witch hunt,” read a complaint filed in a federal courthouse in Kansas in January by Dr. Tao's lawyer.
The University of Kansas did not respond to requests for comment.
Dr. Tao's experience highlights that more than three years after the Justice Department officially ended its Trump-era program known as the Chinese initiative, its impact remains echoing among Chinese professors and researchers.
The FBI has raised at least 12 prosecutions at universities and research institutions over three years. This initiative was mostly effective against Chinese scholars. None of them included charges of economic spying, trade secret theft or intellectual property charges.
Critics argued that the program was overstated by selecting scientists based on their ethnicity and blurring the line between violations of disclosure policies and more serious crimes like spying. Many of the prosecutions against Chinese scholars ultimately collapsed.
However, concerns are growing that China's initiative could be revived under a second Trump administration.
Congress is currently considering a budget bill that allocates funds to the Department of Justice program, which focuses on eradicating Chinese espionage, including academia. And about a week ago, Republican lawmakers reintroduced the law to protect against Chinese espionage by establishing a “CCP initiative” (referring to the Chinese Communist Party) under the Department of Justice.
“President Joe Biden recklessly ended the Chinese initiative that President Trump established during his first term,” Florida Sen. Rick Scott, co-sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. “Now, President Trump is taking action to ensure that communist China is fully responsible for US exploitation.”
There is a wide agreement that the Chinese government has attempted to steal American technology, including recruiting foreign scientists.
China's partnerships with US-funded researchers and universities have also helped drive Beijing's advances in areas such as hypersonics, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and semiconductors, according to a report released last fall, released by a House committee focusing on threats from China.
American universities disputed some of the reports, but they also began shutting down collaborations with Chinese institutions. In January, the University of Michigan ended its joint partnership with a Chinese university.
Lawmakers have also raised concerns about many Chinese students studying science and engineering on American campuses.
“The difference is that Chinese students here in America don't study the history of ancient Greece. They're here studying STEM and national security issues,” Sen. James Rich, Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in January. “And each of them is representatives of the Chinese Communist Party, whether they like it or not.”
Critics say resources could be directed towards eradicating actual Chinese spy threats. Such programs could backfire US national security by helping accelerate the leakage of key talent to maintain its scientific technology advantage over China.
“There are real, real threats that need to be addressed, but we shouldn't use sledgehammers for this issue. We should use Messulpel,” said Gisela Perez Kusakawa, executive director of the Asian American Scholars Forum, a New York-based advocacy group.
A 2022 survey of Chinese scholars found that 45% of respondents who previously won federal grants said they would avoid doing so in the future. The interview cited concerns that many people could be exposed to unnecessary racial profiling.
The number of academic cooperation between US and Chinese researchers has also declined since 2017. There are also concerns that the comprehensive limitations on future research cooperation recommended by House Republicans in the fall report could potentially cut off American scientists from areas already ahead, such as materials science, himonics and nano-agricultural technology.
Caroline Wagner, a professor of public policy at Ohio State University, advises the government on the security of research, but said that, given the open nature of scientific research, efforts to blunt China's acquisition of certain technologies can ultimately prove “myopia.”
Federal funding agencies and universities have recently taken steps to clarify the relationships academics need to disclose. Dr. Wagner said it was a step in the right direction.
“We don't know if China's initiative will be needed given that all the infrastructure is in place right now,” she said.
Critics say Dr. Tao is a case study of how the issue of integrity in academic research was used to support the accusations of spies. Growing up in a village in southwestern China, Dr. Tao moved to the United States in 2002 to earn his PhD. in chemistry from Princeton University. After working at several different universities, he was recruited to the position of tenure faculty from the University of Kansas in 2014.
Known among his colleagues for his intense work ethic, Dr. Tao continued to work even after allegations came up, whether he was suspended without a salary or had published dozens of papers. But he's also accumulating millions of dollars bills.
According to his lawsuit against the university, the FBI began an investigation after a disgruntled visitor mistakenly accused Dr. Tao of being a spy. During the investigation, authorities discovered a job opening from Fuzhou University in southern China that Dr. Tao had failed to disclose to the university.
Dr. Tao traveled to China to establish a university research institute and recruitment staff, and informed officials at the University of Kansas that he was in Germany. However, Dr. Tao told officials he had no disclosure because he had never received money or had never signed an employment agreement with Fuzhou University.
Still, prosecutors said Dr. Tao committed the fraud by hiding his work and offerings with his university and two funding agencies, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.
The ju judge found that he was found guilty of three wire fraud and one count that made false statements. However, in 2022, a federal judge abandoned the fraud conviction citing inadequate evidence that Dr. Tao received money for his work in China.
“This is not a spying activity,” said U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson. “If that's the case, they presented no evidence of what was happening.”
And in 2024, the federal court of appeals neglected the final count of making a false statement, claiming that Dr. Tao's failure to disclose had not affected the actual funding decision.
Dr. Tao denounced discriminatory universities based on race in a lawsuit to get their jobs back, and said other professors who were not of Chinese descent did not face dismissal even if they had similar private exchanges with foreign universities. The lawsuit said the university violated its own policies by failing to hold a hearing on employment status.
In addition to reinstatement, Dr. Tao is seeking payments for losses in wages, lawyer fees, and damages for mental distress and injuries to his reputation.
“We can't choose the country we were born in, the country we were born in,” said the wife of Dr. Tao, a U.S. citizen. “What we've been going on, this is totally racial profiling.”
