Hai-Bin Ruan 阮海斌

“He agrees with critics that the China Initiative damaged the reputations of many innocent scientists and “deterred good people from coming to the U.S.” But he also thinks it “has helped the country more than it has hurt the country by deterring bad people from coming here … and making the country safer.” And he strongly defends the government’s tactics.” China Initiative destroyed the lives of many innocent scientists and led to the death of the innocent Professor Jane Wu. I wonder whether Dao and other @RiceUniversity leadership similarly defend the Japanese American internment camps during WW2, which imprisoned all Japanese Americans with 1/16 Japanese heritage, children under 10, seniors above 70, and people with disabilities, since the camps likely deterred spying activities. A foundermental issue of the infamous China Initiative is its “punish-first-until-proven-innocent” approach. This immoral and un-american approach was not addressed by Dao in this report. Innocent Chinese American scientists should not be considered and treated as “necessary sacrifices” for any purpose, and be subject to such injustice. By the way, claiming that FBI agents know better about how the world works is completely false. One piece of false evidence against Professor Anming Hu was a wrong translation FBI generated using Google Translate. In Professor Franklin Tao’s case, the procecutor argued in court “who would work for free?” We academics work for free all the time in routine academic activities. What FBI and Dao call “facts” are questionable. They are just common blokes too. After China Initiative, Dao landed the likely much better paid position of Associate Vice President of research security at Rice University. Such great career incentive for FBI agents to start the next China Initiative, regardless of the many innocent lives destroyed.