But she thinks the numbers of researchers leaving the US are far greater than the cases she’s heard about. Some left because they felt they were being targeted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or NIH, or feared being investigated by them. Alice Huang, a biologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and vice-president of the 80-20 Educational Foundation, an advocacy group for Asian American equality, says she knows of about four researchers of Chinese descent who were US citizens and have left the country in the past two years. Several scientists who spoke to Nature say they know of researchers with Chinese backgrounds who have left the US because they felt nervous or unsafe.
“This creates a truly oppressive environment in which to try to perform research.” People cannot focus on their work when they are concerned that they might be investigated or accused of spying, says Chen. The latest arrests are another example of the US government cracking down on Chinese scholars, part of a pattern of actions that have created a fearful atmosphere and made researchers think about leaving, says Jessica Chen, an immigration lawyer in Houston, Texas, who has been contacted by researchers for immigration issues. And in the past two months, four researchers from China working in the United States have been charged with visa fraud for allegedly failing to declare links to China’s military, marking a new chapter in US-China science relations. Of these researchers, 93% had ties to China and 82% were of Asian extraction.
The NIH said in June that it had investigated 189 researchers who might have violated grant or institutional rules on research integrity. US researchers with ties to China who are funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or National Science Foundation (NSF) have also been investigated for potentially violating funding rules. Scientists in China say US government crackdown is harming collaborations Since 2018, US government agencies have unveiled increasingly strict visa restrictions for Chinese nationals, and controls on what research can be shared with China. US politicians - including President Donald Trump - have accused the Chinese government of using students and researchers to illicitly acquire US knowledge and intellectual property, allegations that the Chinese government has repeatedly denied. The research community has been increasingly feeling the effects of political tensions between the United States and China. “There are certainly people leaving,” says Steven Chu, a Nobel-prizewinning physicist at Stanford University in California, who was secretary of energy under former US president Barack Obama. Their exodus would be a loss for US innovation, according to extensive interviews Nature carried out with scientists and research leaders.
US scientists are concerned that their government’s crackdown on foreign interference at universities is driving away scientists of Chinese descent. The Trump administration has accused China of stealing US intellectual property.
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