More than 1,000 Chinese researchers have left the United States amid a U.S. crackdown on alleged technology theft, top U.S. security officials said on Dec. 2, and further alleging that Chinese agents had already been targeting the incoming Biden Administration. John Demers, chief of the U.S. Justice Department’s National Security Division, told a discussion hosted by the Aspen Institute think tank that the researchers had left the country while the department launched multiple criminal cases against Chinese operatives for industrial and technological espionage.
A Justice Department official said this was a different group than those mentioned by the State Department in September, when it said the United States had revoked visas for more than 1,000 Chinese nationals under a presidential measure denying entry to students and researchers deemed security risks.
In a similar vein, the U.S. is also restricting visas for those people who are members of the Chinese Communist Party to only a month’s stay at a time, which has also raised protest from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
