9Īfter the 2020 election, the China Initiative continued for the first year of President Biden’s administration. research institutions’ ability to collaborate with top academics. 8 These latter prosecutions became a subject of controversy, with critics claiming they constituted racial profiling and slowed innovation by damaging U.S. 7 In that atmosphere, the DOJ brought a series of prosecutions targeting both high-profile Chinese companies and previously unknown Chinese individuals, including academics, for offenses ranging from economic espionage, trade secret theft, and fraud to false statements. 4 Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that “Chinese economic espionage against the United States has been increasing” and “e’re not going to take it anymore.” 5 Thereafter, then Attorney-General William Barr doubled down on those sentiments, characterizing China as engaging “in an economic blitzkrieg-an aggressive, orchestrated, whole-of-government (indeed, whole-of-society) campaign to seize the commanding heights of the global economy and to surpass the United States as the world’s preeminent superpower.” 6 Even then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly stated that “China ripped off our prized intellectual property and trade secrets, costing millions of jobs all across America,” and highlighted the administration’s efforts to combat this threat. The Department of Justice launched the China Initiative in 2018 after a series of federal government investigations regarding China’s trade practices, including its alleged efforts to steal American intellectual property. The Origin & Development of the China Initiative Rather, the past year has shown that the DOJ remains committed to combatting suspected economic espionage, trade secret theft, and national security threats from China, while abandoning the Initiative’s name and some of the more technical, regulatory prosecutions that had drawn public criticism. A review of the relevant cases shows that is exactly what the DOJ has done: since the DOJ made its announcement, the DOJ has not stopped investigating prosecuting Chinese actors. In our view as reflected in our OnPoint at the time, 3 the DOJ would not end its initiative just refocus it. 1 This led a variety of legal commentators and news organizations to report that the China Initiative was “dead” or “ended.” 2 But we respectfully disagreed. The Department of Justice announced on February 23, 2022, that it would no longer be grouping cases under the “China Initiative” rubric, citing the “harmful perception” of racial or ethnic bias the use of that nomenclature had potentially created.
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