China-US relationship. Illustration: Liu Rui/Global Times

The US Department of Justice announced on Wednesday it has ended the "China Initiative," a program launched during the Trump administration to target so-called "Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft," which the Chinese Foreign Ministry said should have been abolished along with the former administration's policies toward China a long time ago. 

Experts pointed out that discontinuing the program does not mean that the US is no longer suppressing Chinese scholars, but is simply a gesture of goodwill at a time when the situation in Europe is heating up. 

The so-called China Initiative is a poisonous legacy of the previous administration, which should have been abolished a long time ago, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a routine press conference on Thursday. 

"Facts have shown that the program is a tool for local anti-China forces to generalize the concept of national security and contain and suppress China," Hua said. 

Hua pointed out that the so-called "China Initiative" has aggravated racial discrimination against Chinese in the US, caused serious harm to the Asian community, and seriously poisoned the atmosphere of mutual trust and cooperation between China and the US. 

Hua also urged the US to stop treating China as an imaginary enemy, stop interfering with normal exchanges and cooperation between the two countries, and completely eliminate the poisonous legacy of the previous administration. 

The notorious "China Initiative" was launched by the Trump administration in 2018 to tackle  so-called China's intelligence activities in the US. However, media reports revealed that most of the cases under the "China Initiative" did not involve charges related to intellectual property and commercial theft, but so-called fraudulent misrepresentation or concealment of taxes. 

A study released in September by Andrew Chongseh Kim, a lawyer and law professor, shows that as many as one in three Asians were falsely accused.

The US announcement came after the Chinese Americans' protest outside the US Department of Justice in January and the joint letter from 192 professors at Yale University, stating that the program is fundamentally flawed. 

"The fact that so many people have risen up in opposition clearly shows that this program is unpopular and harmful," Hua said. 

This program is completely racist that hit the American scientific community very hard, Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times. 

"With China getting stronger, many Chinese scientists in the US are choosing or considering going back to China because of this initiative, as the pressure it puts on them affects their normal work," Lü said. 

Lü pointed out that the US chose to announce the dropping of the China Initiative at this time, as with many of their recent statements toward China, in the hope that they could pull China in during a time of tensions in Europe.