By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-31 14:21:13 | Updated at 2025-04-02 05:17:45
1 day ago
Security raids on the homes of a noted Chinese-American cybersecurity researcher have reignited fears of racial profiling in Trump-led America, under what some are calling a de facto “China Initiative 2.0”.
According to local media, officers from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security on Friday searched two homes owned by Wang Xiaofeng, a professor at Indiana University Bloomington.
The searches in the cities of Bloomington and Carmel were carried out under a court warrant, but authorities did not disclose the grounds for the operation, a report said, citing an FBI spokeswoman in the Indiana state capital.
The raids have left the Chinese-American scientific community bracing for a return of the politically charged investigations that upended academic collaboration under the first Donald Trump administration.
A Chinese biologist working at the National Institutes of Health – the largest US funding agency for biomedical research – told the Post on condition of anonymity that Wang’s case had given Chinese-origin scientists in the US another reason to feel “a deeper chill”.
“‘China Initiative 2.0’ has always been a topic of discussion in the US,” the biologist said, referencing a policy launched under Trump in late 2018.
