The Biden administration is replacing the “China Initiative” started under former President Trump to probe potential economic espionage and intellectual property theft, a Justice Department official said Wednesday.
The Justice Department made the decision to replace the Trump-era strategy for investigations because it believes the government “helped give rise to a harmful perception” that the department uses lower standards to prosecute Chinese criminals and views ethnic Chinese people differently, according to Matthew Olsen, assistant attorney general for the National Security Division.
“While I remain focused on the evolving, significant threat that the government of China poses, I have concluded that this initiative is not the right approach,” Mr. Olsen said during an event at George Mason University. “Instead, the current threat landscape demands a broader approach.”
Justice’s National Security Division will take a lead role in evaluating investigations and will work with FBI and other agencies in doing so, Mr. Olsen told the Antonin Scalia Law School’s National Security Institute.
The Biden administration faced pressure from liberals looking to kill the investigations aimed at China over alleged bigotry. Rep. Ted Lieu, California Democrat, said last year that he was pushing the Justice Department to change or scrap the initiative, and he urged supporters of the Committee of 100, the Chinese American leadership organization, to join him by writing to the Justice Department.
The civil rights group Asian Americans Advancing Justice applauded the administration’s decision on Wednesday to undo the initiative, but said it wanted transparency into how the federal government will dissolve the program.
By bringing potential investigations from the initiative under the National Security Division, Mr. Olsen said the Justice Department will apply a framework it calls its “Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats.” The new strategy involves aggressively investigating and prosecuting espionage to defend against threats to national security, economic security, and democratic institutions such as through malign influence.
“We will use all the legal tools in our arsenal to combat these threats,” Mr. Olsen said.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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