Does anyone know what this refers to? Is it prosecutions of Chinese researchers in the US?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/21/politics/charles-lieber-harva...
And there may have been another similar case, I can't recall. I believe the US line is that China was trying to steal research or something.
I don't believe any of the people implicated were charged with treason or spying or anything like that. It's been more mundane "failing to disclose bank accounts" kind of stuff. Whether that's indicative of anything is up in the air.
The US targeted mostly Chinese Scientists working in the US. His thesis is that caused excess harm to scientific productivity.
During the Trump administration, the US government began investigating a large number of ethnically Chinese scientists in the US. The initiative was supposedly about rooting out espionage, but it has ended up being more of a witch hunt.
The two worst cases so far are Prof. Anming Hu of the University of Tennessee (thankfully acquitted, after getting fired) and Prof. Gang Chen of MIT (this hasn't yet gone to trial, but it looks like the government is essentially going after him for doing his job).