According to a new poll, some U.S.-based scientists are withdrawing from cooperation with Chinese scientists because they fear that federal prosecutors would investigate them, resulting in a chilling impact on scientific research.

Over the past year, a rising number of scientific and civil rights organizations have expressed concern about what they perceive to be racial profiling of researchers under the Trump administration’s China Initiative program.

Scientific research in China has been scrutinized in unprecedented detail as part of an anti-espionage and trade-secret theft campaign. On federal grant applications or other government documents, a dozen academics from universities around the country were accused of lying about their Chinese affiliations or funding sources as a result of the program.

Additionally, federal scientific bodies like as the National Institutes of Health have initiated inquiries into whether researchers are revealing their foreign ties and funding sources, with the majority of the investigations focusing on China. As a result, a number of scientists have been laid off.

Researchers found that “there is a chilling effect,” according to Jenny J. Lee, a University of Arizona professor and lead researcher who led the survey, which was conducted on behalf of the Committee of 100. The self-described “leadership organization of prominent Chinese-Americans,” the Committee of 100 commissioned the study.

Others had speculated before, but now we have empirical evidence that it is affecting scientists of all nationalities in different ways,” said Lee, whose research focuses on the internationalization of higher education and scientific collaborations, as well as the issues of neo-racism and neo-nationalalism. “This is essentially harming the United States’ ability to compete worldwide. Scientists are less likely to collaborate with China, less likely to host Chinese scientists, less likely to apply for government money, which means smaller projects, and more inclined to work in domestic teams,” according to a new report.

Concerningly, Lee noted, “they are less inclined to remain in the United States.”

According to a survey, 42.2 percent of Chinese scientists feel racially profiled by the U.S. government but just 8.6 percent of non-Chinese scientists feel the same way, which is more than double the percentage of non-Chinese scientists.

According to the study, Chinese scientists were more likely than non-Chinese researchers to claim that they had trouble receiving financing in the United States because of their race, ethnicity, or national origin than non-Chinese researchers were (38.4 percent versus 14.2 percent). In contrast to the 11.7 percent of non-Chinese scientists who stated the same, more over half (50.7 percent) of Chinese scientists indicated feeling significant worry and/or anxiety that they were being monitored by the U.S. government.

U.S.-based scholars, particularly those of Chinese ethnicity, were shown to have a reluctance to collaborate with scholars in China in a poll. When it comes to collaborations with Chinese scientists, 19.5 percent of Chinese respondents said they have ended or suspended them in the last three years compared to 11.9 percent of non-Chinese colleagues. Because of the China Initiative, the most common reason given was a wish to disassociate themselves from China-based colleagues (61.2 percent).

Most Chinese respondents identified the China Initiative as the primary reason for terminating their Chinese collaborations, whereas just 27.3 percent of respondents from other countries said the same.

Citizen scientists from other countries were also asked about their intentions to stay in the United States. While just 7.1 percent of the non-Chinese citizen scientists polled stated this, 42.1 percent of Chinese citizen scientists stated this, while only 7.1 percent of non-Chinese citizen scientists stated this.

Many of the respondents, including those who were born in the United States, questioned their plans to remain in the country.

‘I was born in China and became a citizen of the United States,’ one responder, an astronomy professor who defined himself as Chinese American, stated. For my country, I would never do something that would harm or betray it.” I am grateful to the United States for helping me achieve success in my career. For the sake of science and peace, I want to establish a bridge between the United States and China. To put it another way, the “Chinese Initiative” has convinced me that I don’t belong in the United States. (In China, there are numerous possibilities for me.)”

This probe and the restrictions against Chinese researchers make me feel unwelcome and somewhat discriminatory as a Chinese professor who is trained and has been working in the US for nearly 20 years,” wrote a Chinese associate professor of chemistry. Since I’ve been in the United States, I’ve noticed that Chinese scientists aren’t as highly regarded as they once were, and politics are interfering with academic independence. To be honest, if this trend continues or even worsens, I’m definitely considering migrating to China.”

It also quotes non-Chinese scientists who say they’ve cut back on collaborations with Chinese colleagues to avoid any unnecessary risk or difficulty.

According to a non-Asian environmental scientist, “the atmosphere in the US [is] making collaboration with China complex and somewhat risky, so many US-based researchers now avoid it to avoid the hassle.”

More than half of the respondents to the survey “described an impact on their research projects and productivity… as a result,” according to the report. Some researchers expressed a desire to shift their focus to issues that were perceived less contentious… NIH [National Institutes of Health], for example, has been regularly cited as a threat in over-scrutinizing relationships with China. Consequently, some scientists have expressed decreased enthusiasm in applying for federal grants. Others stated that they were only interested in working for domestic teams. “Also, some stated that they would only work with open-source data,”

In response to a request for comment, the Department of Justice did not return calls or emails Thursday.

Chinese government programs to steal critical technology have been described as having a “unique scope and scale” by Justice Department officials, who have previously defended the initiative and refuted claims of racial discrimination. Another reason for their support of prosecuting those accused of withholding information about their affiliations and funding sources from federal forms is that lying is a crime, and there’s no exception for academics.

In recent months, the Justice Department has suffered a series of legal defeats relating to the project. A federal judge recently acquitted a University of Tennessee at Knoxville professor who was accused of lying about an affiliation with a Chinese university on a NASA application. Five Chinese scholars accused of misrepresenting about military ties on visa applications were dismissed by the Department of Homeland Security in July.

In the study, several researchers indicated misunderstanding regarding their university’s policy on releasing information about their work. Only 24.7 percent of Chinese scientists and 20.2 percent of non-Chinese scientists responded that their academic institution had not provided clear rules on how to report conflicts of interest..

A total of 658 Chinese and 782 non-Chinese scientists participated in the poll, along with a further 509 scientists who did not disclose their racial or ethnic background. There was a 6.8% response rate to the survey.

Inquiries from Chinese scientists about the validity of the poll were made to Lee after it had been distributed, she added. Because she had a personal relationship to the Chinese coworkers who completed it, she was able to get them to engage in the survey that they otherwise would not have done. The fear of being caught made one survey taker alter his or her responses. These experiences, she said, indicate that some survey respondents may have self-censored and under-reported the depth of the challenges they encountered.

Thursday night, Lee gave a presentation on the research to a group of notable university administrators and academics.

Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of Stanford University, remarked during Thursday’s ceremony that “the last few years have been particularly difficult for Chinese and Chinese American scholars in the United States.” That racism and hatred toward persons of Asian heritage has escalated throughout the pandemic, and that Chinese and Chinese American academics are reporting heightened pressure and scrutiny of their academic pursuits, in large part due to policies in Washington, is profoundly concerning to me.”

In recent years, policy makers have expressed concern about the potential for intellectual property misappropriation, according to Tessier-Lavigne. As universities, we have a responsibility to deal with these challenges, but it’s also crucial that these concerns are handled in a way that protects our capacity to work on significant research,”

“It has ushered in increased suspicions about scientific collaborations with China,” said Zhengyu Huang, president of the Committee of 100.

African Americans are more likely to be pulled over by police because of their skin color, a term known as “driving while Black,” according to Huang. We now have a similar expression in the Chinese American community—’researching while Chinese American’—that refers to scientists of Chinese descent who are more likely to be suspected of spying for China merely because of their race or national origin,” he said.