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The China Initiative (from 14)
was born in China. He was director of
MIT’s Pappalardo Micro/Nano Engineering
Laboratory and director of the Solid State
Solar Thermal Energy Conversion Center.
PRC appointments
According to the DOJ, since 2012, Chen
held various appointments with the PRC
aimed at promoting China’s technological
and scientific development.
Chen, the DOJ said, received about $29
million in foreign funding, including $19
million from China’s Southern University of
Science and Technology. Chen’s research
at MIT was funded by more than $19 mil-
lion from U.S. federal agencies.
Chen is also charged with failing to report
a bank account in the PRC with more than
$10,000 — an IRS violation. His sentenc-
ing date is pending.
Arrested on January 14, Chen was the
latest academic charged under the China
Initiative.
Many of the Chinese scientists arrested
under the initiative are from lesser known
universities than Chen and Lieber.
Prof. Tao arrested
For example Feng “Franklin” Tao, 47, a
chemical engineering professor at the Uni-
versity of Kansas, was arrested in August
2019. He was the first of the ethnic Chi-
nese to be prosecuted under the initiative.
Tao was an associate professor at KU’s
Center for Environmentally Beneficial Ca-
talysis (CEBC). He was charged with one
count of wire fraud and three counts of
program fraud.
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The DOJ alleged that Chen received about $19 million from Chi-
na’s Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen.
The school was founded in 2011 and employs a tenured or ten-
ure-track faculty of 380.
The DOJ had alleged that in May 2018 Tao
signed a five-year contract with Fuzhou
University in China that designated him as
a Changjiang Scholar Distinguished Profes-
sor.
Fuzhou University
The contract required him to be a full time
employee of the Chinese university.
While Tao was under contract with Fuzhou
University, he was conducting research at
KU that was funded through two U.S. De-
partment of Energy contracts and four Na-
tional Science Foundation contracts, the
DOJ said. His trial is scheduled for March.
Anming Hu, a Chinese-Canadian was the
first person tried under the Initiative. At the
time of his arrest in February 2020, he was
a professor and nanotechnology expert at
the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Hu was charged with three
counts of making false
statements and three
counts of wire fraud, while
receiving grants from NASA.
A jury in June 2021 dead-
Anming Hu locked on Hu’s guilt and the
judge declared a mistrial.
On September 2021, a federal judge,
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