MIT Professor Targeted by ‘China Initiative’ Asks U.S. Congress to Review Dismissed Espionage Allegations

An MIT professor has called on Congress to investigate the Justice Department’s “China Initiative” on economic espionage, after prosecutors dismissed charges against him.

The dismissal was “in the interests of justice,” according to a statement from the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts issued last Thursday.

The statement said that the office concluded that “we can no longer meet our burden of proof at trial” after assessing new information obtained about the case of Gang Chen, a 57-year-old nanotechnologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was arrested in January 2021 on suspicion of failing to disclose millions of dollars in funding he allegedly received from China.