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Know little about this case, but given what happened with China Initiative in Trump I, I’m genuinely surprised there are still Chinese professors not leaving or preparing to leave US.

200+ lost jobs, at least one suicide, if that still not ring alarm for these Chinese-born professionals, their IQ may not match up the tenure I assume.



It's not easy to leave a tenured position you worked half your life to get to I suppose...


From what I understand the PRC tries pretty hard to provide a lot of incentives to academic returnees. I do wonder if they have a tenure match program, where if you have tenure at an American university of a given calibre you are automatically granted tenure at a Chinese university of a similar calibre if you return to China. They probably should.


If that's true, then that seems to be the simplest explanation for what happened here? (Honestly asking.)


Oh, no. I'm not talking about alleged espionage, I'm talking about people moving universities. Moving university doesn't mean disappearing off the face of the Earth.


It is extremely bad form to leave your students stranded and move to another university with no communication. It also wouldn't warrant FBI action; plenty of people have moved back to their home countries from academic positions in the US.


but where to leave to?

Many of them are basically refuges which did use their nogen to be able to escape the Chinese regime and find a home without technically being refuges at any point.

Some grew up in the US.

Many have family and children in the US, thus which very well might be US citizens.

For many they do not have a place to go, the US is their only home.

Even for thus which where involved in spying not all of them did so of their free choice. It's not a secret that China secret police is present in most countries with larger China ethnicity including the US and there had been more then one or two cases of them threatening and blackmailing ethnic Chinese people (including such with full US citizenship). Including e.g. kidnapping their children.


> Even for thus which where involved in spying not all of them did so of their free choice.

You are implying some of the China Initiative victims were spies. However, based on this wikipedia page[1], none of them are.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Initiative


> I’m genuinely surprised there are still Chinese professors not leaving or preparing to leave US

You hit the nail on the head. they clearly knew they shouldn't stay, but chose to remain here — most likely because they were on a secret mission


>I’m genuinely surprised there are still Chinese professors not leaving or preparing to leave US.

I'm genuinely surprised by the level of American delusion about what happening in the others parts of the world.

In China, their risks are much higher. Outside of the China, they would face a several times drop in their standard of living, which isn't worth tiny risk of something bad happened because of China Initiative. Especially in the case when this "something bad" most probably would be them losing their job and deported, something that your solution suggesting them to start from.




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