Spying charges against Chinese-American scientists spark fears of a witch hunt
A number of those accused have had their cases dropped abruptly, but the damage to their reputations and careers has already been done
Just after dawn on May 21, 2015, physicist Xiaoxing Xi awoke to find a dozen or so armed federal agents swarming his home in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. When he rushed to open the door, the agents drew their guns and announced that they had a warrant for his arrest. They had brought along a battering ram.
The night before, Xi’s wife had returned from a conference overseas. The couple had stayed awake chatting with their daughters, planning a family outing to a popular Korean barbecue restaurant to eat fried chicken. Now his daughters – one in middle school, the other in college – watched in horror as agents handcuffed Xi, who was still not fully dressed, and escorted him away.
Then interim chairman of the physics department at Philadelphia’s Temple University, Xi is a naturalised US citizen who has lived and worked in the country since 1989. He is among the world’s leading experts on superconducting thin films, which carry electricity without resistance at very low temperatures. At the time of his arrest, he was in what he calls a “very productive” phase of his career, overseeing nine research projects, including work for Temple University’s Energy Frontier Research Center, which is funded by the US Department of Energy.
Xi faced 80 years in prison and a US$1 million fine.
He was released after putting up his home as bail, but his passport was confiscated and his domestic travel restricted to eastern Pennsylvania. For days, his family avoided the windows in their home as television stations broadcast live from their front garden. Over the months that followed, they drained their bank accounts to pay legal fees.
