Republican senators are urging Attorney General Merrick Garland to reconsider the Department of Justice’s decision to shutter the China Initiative, pressing him on the Biden DOJ’s new, and vaguer, strategy aimed at “Nation-State Threats.”
The Justice Department announced in February that it would pull the plug on the Trump-era initiative aimed at cracking down on China’s economic espionage following a year of criticism from some fellow Democrats, hundreds of university professors, left-wing activists, and the Chinese Communist Party itself.
Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, led the letter pushing back on this decision, with signatories also including fellow GOP Sens. Mike Lee, Bill Cassidy, Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, James Lankford, Ron Johnson, and Cynthia Lummis.
“Despite this critical moment and the high stakes, DOJ chose to disband its China Initiative in favor of a vague ‘Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats’ that appears to equate the unique and extensive threats from the CCP with those of other nation-state threats,” the Republicans told Garland, adding, “We urge DOJ to formally recognize and reprioritize the threat presented by the CCP to U.S. national security, and ask that you reconsider your decision to disband the China Initiative.”
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, who runs the DOJ’s National Security Division, said in February that he decided to end the China Initiative, contending that the effort could have been perceived as racist, even though he acknowledged that China poses an “evolving, significant threat.”
Republicans retorted, “The wholesale abandonment of a national security initiative because of unproven allegations of racial profiling should not happen.”
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Rubio will be delivering a speech at the Heritage Foundation this Tuesday on “Putin’s War and the Threat from Communist China.” His office told the Washington Examiner that he “is expected to make criticism of the [China Initiative] decision a focal point.”
“Combatting the CCP threat should not be confused with bias toward Chinese people, much less Americans of Chinese descent. In reality, the CCP represents neither of these groups of people,” the GOP letter reads. “Not only does the CCP not represent the Chinese people, but the greatest victims of the CCP’s totalitarian model of governance are the Chinese people themselves. The DOJ should continue to take all appropriate steps to dispel any narratives, often perpetuated by the CCP itself, that countering real security threats posed by the CCP implicates Asian Americans.”
The DOJ’s new strategy includes a more dispersed focus on Russia, Iran, and North Korea, along with China.
The China Initiative, started in 2018, attempted to shine a light on the CCP’s coordinated efforts to steal research and technology from the United States, with a particular focus on rooting out academics who concealed their ties to China.
Numerous people have been convicted through the China Initiative, including Harvard professor Charles Lieber, who was found guilty in December of all federal charges related to concealing his ties to the Wuhan University of Technology and the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents Program while receiving U.S. government funding.
Garland was asked about the China Initiative in October, and he called the CCP a “serious threat.”
The GOP letter calls the China Initiative “a long overdue step towards recognizing the unique and large-scale threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and combating espionage.”
The Republicans asked Garland what “concrete changes” the DOJ would be making related to investigations and prosecutions when shifting from the China Initiative to its new strategy, also asking the attorney general, “Given that the CCP actively recruits the world’s leading science and technology innovators and has crafted policies to develop key technologies, shouldn’t universities and the Justice Department’s initiative account for this unique threat?”
The Republicans also noted that the CCP often “seeks out recruits from within the Chinese diaspora” and wondered if the DOJ will continue to use all of its tools to stop Chinese repression overseas.
The CCP has attacked the China Initiative relentlessly and has also seized on U.S.-based efforts by professors and activists to end it.
The U.S. Heartland China Association, a pro-China business group that counted two key Biden administration picks as strategic advisers, also likened the DOJ’s China Initiative to “McCarthyism.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray said in February that the growing economic and national security threat posed by the CCP is graver than ever, likening the danger to a more technologically sophisticated Soviet Union.
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The new letter comes as China is attempting to present itself as a peace mediator in Russia’s war against Ukraine while amplifying its Kremlin ally’s narratives trying to justify the war and pointing the finger at the U.S.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said this month that China is an “absolutely unparalleled” long-term priority for the U.S. intelligence community.
