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Ling Xin

On a Friday in March 2021, as Gee-Kung Chang began his day as usual at 5am, there was no hint that his life was about to change forever.
As the Georgia Institute of Technology chair professor – a pioneer in the networks behind 5G and 6G – prepped for lectures and set up a thesis defence for a PhD student, a thunderous knock at the door shattered the quiet.
On the other side were nine US federal agents – seven from the FBI and two from Homeland Security. They stormed in, handcuffed Chang – who was about 74 at the time – and began searching every room, drawer and cupboard in his home in Smyrna, a suburb outside Atlanta.
It was not until his first court appearance that Chang learned he had been indicted on 10 felony counts; accused of abusing a research visa programme known as J-1 by bringing Chinese scholars to Georgia Tech and allegedly having them work instead for the Chinese telecoms company ZTE.
Chang’s reputation imploded. Colleagues and friends drifted away. “I forced myself to stay sharp mentally and physically,” Chang recalled.
Four years later, the case quietly fell apart. A judge dismissed nine wire fraud charges in 2024 for lack of evidence. The final visa fraud charge was dropped this April, clearing Chang’s name.


“The indictment does not describe a scheme to defraud,” US District Judge Amy Totenberg wrote in her decision to toss out the charges. She added that the case lacked specifics, noting that “one can only speculate” whether Chang had done anything that would have misled the university.
Chang’s case was one of many failed prosecutions under the now-terminated China Initiative, a Department of Justice programme that targeted academics with ties to China.
The indictment against him was fatally flawed, according to Robert Fisher, Chang’s lawyer and partner at the Boston-based law firm Nixon Peabody.
Speaking at a meeting in May of APA Justice, a civil-rights group advocating for Asian-American scientists and communities, Fisher said Chang was accused of defrauding Georgia Tech by sending J-1 visa students to work at ZTE, while they collected stipends and salaries from the university.
But even the government’s own filings showed the scholars were doing research at Georgia Tech, sometimes alongside work at ZTE, which made it impossible to prove the university had been financially harmed, he said.
The visa fraud charge was equally weak, he said. Chang had no role in submitting visa applications and had never received compliance training from the university on compliance requirements.
Like many of his clients, Chang came under scrutiny because he collaborated with ZTE, a Chinese company similar to Huawei that was already under US government monitoring.
Fisher, who also successfully defended MIT professor Gang Chen, said many academics encouraged to work with China in the 2010s were later blindsided by criminal charges as political attitudes hardened.
Professionally, no one could ever compensate me for the time and opportunity lost in this ordeal
G.K. Chang
Speaking at the same meeting, Chang said his life and career may never fully recover. “I was totally exonerated, but ... freedom did not bring euphoria,” he said. “Emotionally, I was worn thin; financially, depleted – and at nearly 78 years old, I know I am slowing down physically.
“Professionally, no one could ever compensate me for the time and opportunity lost in this ordeal to discover new frontiers of science and technology in my peak creative years.”
Born in mainland China in 1947, Chang moved to Taiwan as a young child during the Chinese civil war. He went to the United States in 1970 for graduate studies in physics and earned his PhD from the University of California, Riverside, in 1976. He became a US citizen in 1981.
An expert in optoelectronic integration and fibre-optic communications, Chang held leadership roles at Bell Labs, Bellcore, Telcordia and OpNext. He has received multiple awards over decades of industry work, including the Bellcore President’s Award.
In 2002, he joined Georgia Tech as an Eminent Scholar Chair Professor where he led major research on fibre-wireless networks funded by the National Science Foundation that laid the foundation for 5G and 6G technology.
Chang has advised dozens of PhD students and has published hundreds of papers. In 2019, he received the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award from Georgia Tech’s school of electrical and computer engineering.
Although the China Initiative officially ended in 2022 amid widespread criticism of racial profiling, Fisher warned “it appears to be back in some form”, judging by the number of scientists and even people from the business community now seeking legal help.
Last week, the US House of Representatives was poised to advance a key spending bill that could revive the China Initiative to “maintain America’s competitive edge” and “counter China’s malign ambitions to steal American research”, according to the bill’s accompanying report.
Chang said he chose to share his “to-hell-and-back story” not for sympathy, but as a warning. “To those walking through the same fire, you are not alone,” he said.
“Justice is not guaranteed. It must be fought for.”


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Exonerated Georgia Tech top scientist draws harsh lessons from legal nightmare after judge tosses visa, wire fraud charges


Exonerated Georgia Tech top scientist draws harsh lessons from legal nightmare after judge tosses visa, wire fraud charges.


6G expert G.K. Chang counts costs after winning 4-year fight in China Initiative case

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Exonerated Georgia Tech top scientist draws harsh lessons from legal nightmare after judge tosses visa, wire fraud charges

Exonerated Georgia Tech top scientist draws harsh lessons from legal nightmare after judge tosses visa, wire fraud charges