The Biden Justice Department is ending an initiative aimed at Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft over concerns it created a perception of racism, according to a top official on Wednesday.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olsen announced during a speech at George Mason University that the department was scrapping its China Initiative, even though an internal review found no indication of racial bias or prejudice.
Olsen said, according to a transcript of his speech:
We have heard concerns from the civil rights community that the ‘China Initiative’ fueled a narrative of intolerance and bias. To many, that narrative suggests that the Justice Department treats people from China or of Chinese descent differently. The rise in anti-Asian hate crime and hate incidents only heightens these concerns. The Department is keenly aware of this threat and is enhancing efforts to combat acts of hate.
He said there were also increasing concerns from the academic and scientific community about research grant fraud cases, which included cases where individuals allegedly did not disclose financial ties to China.
“We have heard that these prosecutions — and the public narrative they create — can lead to a chilling atmosphere for scientists and scholars that damages the scientific enterprise in this country,” Olsen said.
“Safeguarding the integrity and transparency of research institutions is a matter of national security. But so is ensuring that we continue to attract the best and the brightest researchers and scholars to our country from all around the world,” he added.
Although he said the China Initiative was driven by “genuine national security concerns,” by grouping cases under the China Initiative rubric, “We helped give rise to a harmful perception” the Department views those with Chinese ties “differently.”
Olsen said the DOJ is replacing the initiative with a “broader approach.”
The Trump administration launched the China Initiative in 2018, aimed at countering Chinese espionage efforts that included paying professors at American universities for access to research funded by U.S. government grants.
Democrat lawmakers applauded the decision. Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said the program had caused harm “to our communities.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, slammed the DOJ’s decision.
He said in a statement, “The CCP has stolen trillions of dollars of American intellectual property, destroyed millions of American jobs, and turned students and researchers studying in the United States into foreign spies. Yet today, the Biden administration announced it’s cancelling the initiative tasked with combatting the Chinese government’s unprecedented domestic sabotage and aggression because they claim it’s racist. Cancelling this initiative is just another instance of weakness from an administration more concerned with being politically correct than protecting Americans. And you can be sure our adversaries are watching.”
Matt Olsen, you sir, are a traitor. How much did the Chinese pay you?
You are absolutely right.
I don’t give monk’s f-k about the empire of China, as they are just another cog in the international corporate machine. And I am an absolute racist mother f-ker when it comes to those who are not American nationals of the American race of every pigment. So tell two millimeter peter Xi Jinping that it isn’t the pigment of his skin, it is the fraudulent fat c-t, I hate to say c-t, but I swear to you all that could be a clitoris, as an attachment to some hermaphrodite, and let’s face it, that’s genetics.
This foreign mother f-ker is looking at me inside my house and see my d-k and see my balls and in that he and the rest of these communist mother f-kers can’t deny but have to acknowledge that they are beneath me.
This fat little f-k, I would beat down in the street and I will wager money on this in fifteen seconds fact, and I don’t care what terms anybody spouts, he is not only not my equal but is far below me as a snake’s belly in a wagon track.
That’s not racism, that’s f-king realism. Want to try it chink, give it go.