Free Republic

As the American people pay attention to a suspected Chinese spy balloon being shot down by a U.S. military fighter aircraft on Saturday after floating across the whole United States, it has been revealed that this has all been made possible by President Joe Biden. In 2018, 45th President Donald Trump put in place a program that identified and prosecuted Chinese threats to national security just like the Chinese spy balloon. In February 2022, The Biden administration ended Trump’s program, named the “China Initiative,” because it was called racist by Asian-American groups. “We helped give rise to a harmful perception...

The Justice Department is ditching the China Initiative, a national security program designed to tackle Chinese economic espionage in the US after a string of cases collapsed amid complaints it was fueling suspicion against Chinese Americans. It was launched by the Trump administration three years ago amid concerns of intellectual property theft at research universities. Matthew Olsen, assistant attorney general for national security, announced a change of strategy Wednesday. He said it followed a months-long review that found it was preventing universities attracting top talent. Instead, he said the work would continue as part of a broader strategy that included...

Harvard professor Dr. Charles Lieber was found guilty of all federal charges against him related to concealing his ties to a Chinese university and the Chinese government's Thousand Talents Program while receiving U.S. government funding. The verdict, a big win for the Justice Department’s China Initiative, came as a federal jury in Boston quickly determined Tuesday that Lieber was guilty on all six charges, including two counts of making false statements to federal investigators, two counts of filing false tax returns, and two counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Lieber, the former chairman of...

BOSTON (Reuters) - A Harvard University nanotechnology professor faces trial on Tuesday on U.S. charges that he lied to authorities about his ties to a China-run recruitment program and concealing funding he received from the Chinese government. Jury selection is slated to begin in Boston federal court in the trial of Charles Lieber, an ex-chair of Harvard's chemistry department charged in the highest-profile case to result from a U.S. crackdown on Chinese influence within universities. Lieber, 62, has pleaded not guilty to six false statement and tax charges. His lawyer, Marc Mukasey, has said Lieber "didn't hide anything, and he...

Xi Jinping hailed the "special" and "unbreakable" relationship between China and Russia in a telephone call with his counterpart Vladimir Putin on Monday, China's state-owned media reported. The two heads of state praised bilateral ties, which are at their "highest level in history," said an announcement by Russia's presidential office after the conversation. The Chinese president called for further "strategic cooperation" between the two nations, which have been sharing growing economic and military ties amid Western sanctions against both Beijing and Moscow. The "special advantages of the China-Russia relationship" were most obvious in times of crisis, China's Xinhua News Agency...