Gang Chen was surrounded by well-wishers when he returned to his laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday, the day after the government dismissed charges of lying on grant applications.
There were more invitations. He was asked to join funded research studies to resume the work he has been doing for his adult life.
Dr. Chen wants to develop a material that can convert heat from car exhaust into electricity or fabric that can cool the body. The hardest thing was tearing himself away from research after his arrest.
Dr. Chen said thank you, but he is uncertain if he will ever feel safe applying for U.S. government funds after the experience of the last year.
Dr. Chen said in a three-and-a-half-hour interview at his M.I.T. office that he believed that the person had a good reputation. The government gets what they want. You are treated like a spy in the end. That hurts your heart. It breaks your confidence.
The case against Dr. Chen was thrown out last week by the government. New information has been received that indicates that Dr. Chen did not have to reveal his affiliations.
The new United States Attorney said that their charging decisions deeply impact people's lives. I will always encourage the prosecutors in our office to engage in this type of rigorous and continued review at every stage of a proceeding. Today's dismissal is a result of that process.
The China Initiative, an effort to crack down on economic and scientific espionage by China, was dismissed. The case against Dr. Chen did not involve espionage or theft of information, but rather failing to disclose Chinese affiliations in grant applications to U.S. agencies. Critics say it has made scientists of Chinese descent afraid.
The last year was traumatic and deeply disillusioning according to Dr. Chen.
In recent months, prosecutors had a proposal in which the government would have dropped the criminal charges in exchange for acknowledging some links to China, he said. He said that he refused it.
He said it was his mentality. I didn't do anything wrong.
The son of two mathematics teachers who were sent to teach on farms during China's Cultural Revolution, Dr. Chen grew up without any hope of becoming a scientist. His parents had a bad classification from the Chinese government and were viewed suspiciously. He was warned by his father that he would probably spend his life as a farmer.
But then Mao died. The first class of Chinese students to take standardized tests vaulted Dr. Chen into an academic elite. He became a naturalized citizen in 2000.
He said that he often discouraged scientists from taking their research out of the United States. He said that the prosecutions of scientists in the United States have made him so angry that he isn't sure if he would do it again.
He said he didn't know if he could give the same advice. I am not sure how this is going to develop. The country needs to wake up. We are killing ourselves. We are committing a real suicide act. I don't know how to tell people about this. Give it some time. I don't know. It is hard to say.
It is a image.
In the first interview he has given about the case, Dr. Chen said there was nothing to celebrate. It is a sad history for the country.
The Justice Department began to announce charges against scientists collaborating with Chinese institutions by 2019. Dr. Chen was following the cases through friends and colleagues. He didn't want to take a sabbatical year in China because it would make him a target.
He was alarmed by the arrest of Charles M. Lieber, the head of Harvard's chemistry department, who was charged with hiding his participation in China's Thousand Talents recruitment program. He said that neither Dr. Chen nor his colleagues saw parallels with their own activities.
He said that most of them looked at the accusation and said, "Woah, he did that?" You tend to believe in government.
He was also under investigation. Dr. Chen was held at the airport for two or three hours as he returned from a trip to China. He refused to give the passwords to his devices when the Homeland Security agent asked for them.
Robert Fisher, a former prosecutor, met with him eight times over the course of the next year. Dr. Chen said he had no concern that the investigation would result in anything.
He said that he didn't do anything wrong. They won't find anything wrong if they look at it.
He was making coffee at 6:30 a.m. on January 14, 2021. He was able to see between 10 and 20 federal agents. The agents went to wake his wife and daughter and he was told to stand in a corner. When his wife saw that he was being taken away, she began to speak to the F.B.I. agents, but he was afraid to speak.
He said that he didn't dare to use Chinese because he spoke with her in Mandarin most of the time. I should have shouted in Chinese, 'Anything you say can be used against you', when they took me away.
Dr. Chen spent the next few hours in custody, pacing in his cell and doing yoga. He asked the F.B.I. agents if they had been asked to make sure he did not commit suicide. He began shaking when he was in a car on the way home after being released.
Dr. Chen joked that he and his wife lost weight because they were so disgusted by the experience of standup comedy.
He said that they were both disgusted. We did not know what this word meant. It is. Disgust is a part of the body. This is a biological reaction after everything that has happened.
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Who is Gang Chen? He is a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2000.
What is the China Initiative? The program was started by the Trump administration to stop scientists from giving technology to China.
What was the reaction to the case? The arrest of Dr. Chen was met with protest from many in academia, who said prosecutors had overreached, blurring the line between grant disclosure violations and more serious crimes like espionage or intellectual property theft.
What is the U.S. trying to do? On January 20, 2022, prosecutors submitted a motion to dismiss the charges, stating that new information had come to their attention and could not meet the burden of proof at trial. The judge is expected to make a decision soon.
Dr. Chen was not allowed to have contact with M.I.T. employees while he was on paid leave. During the months that followed, he had five or six active research projects. The 15 students he worked with were transferred to other research groups.
We are all loser, right? Dr. Chen said so. My reputation was ruined. My students changed their career. They changed to other groups. The country, the U.S., we lose. I don't know how to calculate the loss. That loss can't be calculated.
He got good news last September. He would have been able to return to work and apply for grants in the future if he had a deferred prosecution agreement. Mr. Fisher said that he would have to admit to having some ties to China, but not a violation of the law.
Mr. Fisher said that such a deal was very rare and would have protected Dr. Chen from going to trial.
He said that a lot of people would view that as a win. I told him that I would be sitting with him in the courtroom if we got a guilty verdict.
Dr. Chen said that he considered the deal very serious. He was worried that he would be asked to speak to prosecutors about his colleagues, or that there would be questions about his innocence.
He said he would never incriminate anyone. I have zero confidence in them because they can stretch the facts. Absolutely zero.
The government made a motion to dismiss charges last Thursday, and Dr. Chen was very happy. He was sad.
He said it was hard to tell them there was nothing to celebrate. It is a sad history for the country.
He doesn't know how he will return to his scientific career. Without a funding stream or a research group, he has been working on individual research papers. He woke up at 4:30 a.m. on Thursday to finish a paper on energy transfer in water.
He said speaking out about the China Initiative felt like an obligation. In an editorial in the Boston Globe this week, Dr. Chen called for Congress and the Justice Department to review his case and hold people involved in the prosecution accountable.
He doesn't have an interest in research grants from the U.S. government.
He said he was angry and afraid. My love is science. I didn't want politics, right? I got away from that. I love science. I support people. You can't get away. Everybody is impacted by politics. We need to speak out if there are things that aren't right.
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