PHILADELPHIA — The events that have transpired in the United States over the last two years, community members say, have proven what Xiaoxing Xi and his allies have been saying since 2015: that there is a systemic discrimination and targeting of Asian Americans.
The Temple University physics professor falsely accused of being an economic spy for China filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government in 2017, alleging that the FBI targeted him because of his Chinese ethnicity and willfully misinterpreted evidence to fit a false narrative that he stole secrets from a U.S. company. His lawsuit was dismissed last year, but Xi — a naturalized U.S. citizen and world-renowned expert in the field of superconductivity — returned to court Wednesday to get his lawsuit reinstated.
“The case was dropped seven years ago,” Xi said, referencing the false charges against him that the FBI dropped within months of his 2015 arrest after government officials realized that they had fundamentally misunderstood the science behind their case. “People often said, ‘You went through a traumatic experience,’ and they shrug it off. What has happened since has proven many things I’ve been telling people.”
