Chinese American physicist Xiaoxing Xi is still haunted by the memory of an early morning in 2015, when a group of FBI officers surrounded his home in Pennsylvania.
The agents pointed guns at his wife and two daughters and then handcuffed him.
The former chair of Temple University's physics department was charged with leaking sensitive technology to the Chinese government.
Prosecutors accused Professor Xi of secretly sharing the design of a pocket heater for a supercomputer with scientists in China.
Overnight, Professor Xi's face was splashed across US media and he was branded a "Chinese spy".
He faced up to 80 years in prison if found guilty.
But just four months later, Professor Xi's case came to a dramatic turning point.
Before the trial had even kicked off, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped all charges against Professor Xi, with a document filed in court explaining that "additional information came to the attention of the government".
According to Professor Xi's lawyer Peter Zeidenberg, the scientist had never shared secret technology with Chinese colleagues.
He says Professor Xi was simply engaging in "typical academic collaboration" about a different device.
Mr Zeidenberg said the government hadn't understood the complicated science his client was working on and had failed to consult with experts before arresting him.
Instead, the FBI was alleged to have used Professor Xi's email exchange with Chinese scientific institutions — where he just explained legitimate collaboration projects — as evidence of technology theft.
Despite proving his innocence, the memory of armed FBI agents storming his house has haunted Professor Xi during countless nights over the past seven years.
He also warned that as geopolitical tensions between the US and China continued to escalate, more and more Chinese scientists like him would be caught under a cloud of suspicion for spying.
"In the last maybe 30 years, there were all these [ideas of] openness, exchange and everything," Professor Xi told the ABC from his home in Pennsylvania.
"Now the world is different."
At the university and research sector in Australia and the US, an action countering China's foreign interference and technology theft has been underway since 2018.
Security experts say these efforts are aimed at preventing Beijing's increasing espionage activities.
But insiders of the sector have also raised concerns about the damage being done to Australia and the US's STEM sectors, arguing these measures are driving away prospective students and creating an opportunity for Beijing.
A mass exodus of Chinese scientists from America
In 2018, the Trump administration launched the controversial China Initiative, which sought to protect US laboratories and businesses from economic espionage
Since its launch, the DOJ investigated around 150 scientists over their links with China. Two dozen of them were later charged.
The DOJ wins almost every case it brings. But when it came to the China Initiative, many of the cases of alleged spying or economic espionage were dropped before going to trial.
The program has had some successes in revealing industrial espionage.
For example, last year Chinese national Xu Yanjun was sentenced to 20 years in prison for plotting to steal trade secrets from several US aviation and aerospace companies.
But the program has also been accused of racial profiling against scientists of Chinese heritage.
In February 2022, the DOJ announced it would axe the controversial program, replacing it with new measures that would target not just China but also countries of concern.
However, the chilling effect of the program had already spread through the Chinese American scientist community.
A recent report launched by Asian American Scholar Forum showed that in 2021, at least 1,400 US-trained Chinese scientists had switched their affiliation from American institutions to Chinese ones.
The report also found 72 per cent of more than 1,300 surveyed academics felt unsafe, while about 40 per cent of scientists said they were fearful of conducting research in the US.
The China Initiative had instilled a deep fear of racial profiling and targeting against immigrant scientists, said Gisela Kusakawa, executive director of Asian American Scholar Forum.
"There is this feeling and sentiment that no matter how long you stay in the country, no matter how much you contribute, that somehow you are not going to be treated in the same way that other Americans are going to be treated, that you're going to be subjected to a higher level of scrutiny," she said.
It's not just the number of academics leaving the US that worries Ms Kusakawa.
She has also found young researchers were turning away from America due to concerns about political scrutiny.
"How many young Asian Americans see these high-profile cases of some of the best and brightest in our country and think to themselves, 'that's not the future that I want for myself?'" Ms Kusakawa said.
"We are seeing this loss of talent for the United States, from a community that has really made a big, positive impact for our science and technology."
And it's not just the US that's facing a science talent crisis.
A similar situation is happening in Australia, with even more potentially damaging ramifications.
'Very difficult' getting new blood into Australia, prominent scientist claims
Australia's science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) sector also heavily relies on migrants, especially when it comes to highly-skilled jobs.
Of the 11.5 million people in the Australian labour force in 2016, only 6 per cent had a STEM university degree, according to the 2020 Australia's STEM Workforce Report.
Of that 6 per cent, more than half were born overseas.
But the Australian university sector, which heavily relies on funding from Chinese international students, has faced questions about foreign interference.
Those include allegations that Australian institutions have struck so-called alliances or collaborations with organisations whose sole intent may have been building up China's military strength.
Meanwhile, academics and students say they have been pressured to be silent over their criticism of the leadership in Beijing.
Bart Hogeveen, head of cyber capacity building at Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), says there are "ample signs" in the public domain that China is seeking technology information and intellectual properties from overseas.
"China has clearly expressed its ambition to transform the 'Made in China' policy to 'the world's technology powerhouse' in their words," he said.
In response to growing concerns, the federal government implemented two new laws to counter foreign influence and interference in 2018.
A year later, it also established the University Foreign Interference Taskforce, which later released a guideline on protecting national interest while developing international academic partnerships, conducting due diligence and mitigating cyber business risks.
In March 2022, after a year-long inquiry, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security released a 171-page report with 27 recommendations on preventing national security risks at Australian universities and research institutions.
Mr Hogeveen said academic institutions and small-to-medium-sized businesses had also been reassessing their linkages and intellectual openness with China in recent years.
While university leaders and human rights advocates acknowledged the necessity of such measures, some fear it may have consequences for Australia's future.
Prominent Australian scientists who were recruiting talented researchers from overseas have had their prospective students caught in lengthy visa delays because they had to endure national security checks.
Since 2018, hundreds of PhD applicants and postdoctoral researchers — including those from China — have reportedly waited as long as three years for visas.
Some have been told by the Department of Home Affairs that their delays were related to "legislated national security checks".
Dayong Jin, a prominent Chinese Australian scientist and distinguished professor in biomedical devices at the University of Technology Sydney, said his PhD students were experiencing visa delays, some for more than a year.
Though it has not yet prompted the same mass exodus of scientists as in America, Professor Jin said in the past four years, at least "half a dozen" students he recruited had given up on Australia and decided to join universities in Hong Kong, Singapore and Europe instead.
"We've been trying to get good [PhD] candidates, it's just very difficult," he said.
"If we stop the new blood coming, then that's basically killing the sector."
A Department of Home Affairs spokesperson told the ABC that in the second half of 2022, it finalised 217,000 offshore student visa applications — a 72.7 per cent increase from the same period in 2019 to 2020.
However, the department didn't answer questions about national security checks for prospective PhD students.
How Beijing is reaping the benefits
Beijing stands to benefit from a potential exodus in the US and Australia of the best and brightest from STEM.
As early as 2001, China's Ministry of Science and Technology said every level of society should "encourage and attract outstanding overseas [ethnic Chinese] talents to return to China to work by multiple means — or serve the motherland's developments in other different forms".
These "different forms", as examined by leading China scholars such as Didi Kirsten Tatlow, co-editor of China's Quest for Foreign Technology: Beyond Espionage, means Beijing would use "legal, illegal and grey zone" approaches to acquire "technology, knowledge and talents" from overseas.
While some of these approaches may involve China's spy agency — the Ministry of State Security — they could also involve other agencies of the Chinese government.
The controversial Thousand Talents Plan is just one example.
The program, launched in 2010, aims to entice expatriate Chinese researchers to return to help make the country a global leader in science and technology.
A similar Youth Thousand Talents Plan (YTT) has been launched for early-career researchers.
While many assumed the Thousand Talents Plan exclusively targeted Chinese scientists to come home, new research shows the program really appeals to young researchers with non-Chinese backgrounds.
"For the first nine or 10 cohorts of the YTT recruits, slightly more than 100 scientists are non-Chinese," said Yabo Wang, co-author of the research and associate professor of strategy at University of Hong Kong.
"These are many young and capable scientists in places like North America, European Union, Australia and Japan who do not receive the support to pursue independent research [in their home countries]."
Already it appears as though China is reaping the rewards of its programs with new research finding China has overtaken the US to produce the top 1 per cent of most-cited science papers.
Professor Wang said over the longer term young scholars enticed by YTT and other programs would become the pillars of China's academic science.
"If [Australia and the US] do not engage in serious funding scheme reform to create more opportunities for early-stage scientists, places like China with talent recruitment programs are definitely attractive to them," Professor Wang warned.
And experts warn competition will only continue to increase in future.
China's desire for young talent will grow now that the country is being shut off from key technology in the West, said Chris Tang, Distinguished Professor in Business Administration at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
"So if [China wants] to actually roll out the 5G technology, if they want to improve in terms of healthcare, biotech and space exploration, they need more talent to actually catch up," he said.
How is Australia attracting prospective scientists?
In 2020, Professor Shixue Dou, an award-winning scientist in superconducting and electronic materials at University of Wollongong, decided to retire early.
It was not a decision he ever thought he would make, but the university sector was forced to cut staff due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Professor Dou and his wife, Professor Huakun Liu, who is also a leading scholar in the same field, decided it was time to make way for the next generation.
Despite enjoying their first years of retirement, Professor Dou and Professor Liu eventually realised they missed academia and research.
Last year, the couple received an invitation to work at the University of Shanghai's Science and Technology department. They accepted the offer.
Over the past five years, Professor Dou has felt that Chinese-born researchers at Australian institutions were increasingly censoring themselves when applying for research grants.
For decades, Australian government ministers have had the power to veto grants offered by the Australian Research Council (ARC).
In 2018, then-Education Minister Simon Birmingham used the power to block $1.4m in grants for 11 research projects in humanities, arts and music.
Last March, over 80 leading Australian research bodies and scientists urged the government to relinquish this power, including Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt, who said it made it harder for Australia to recruit international talent.
The Australian Research Council told the ABC the Australian community "expects research to be conducted responsibly, ethically and with integrity", while it "plays a vital leadership role in maintaining and promoting the responsible conduct of research".
Despite the strong calls from academia, the Senate Committee insisted the Ministerial right to veto funding.
It said the ARC is also committed to "a proactive approach to countering foreign interference".
Besides concerns about research independence, Professor Dou said he worries about what he calls "the bamboo ceiling" in Australian academia.
He said job insecurity and a lack of leadership opportunities for Asian academics might see young migrant researchers decide to leave Australia.
ASPI's Hogeveen stresses what national security policies in academia try to achieve is fairness and transparency. He disagrees that these national security measures were to cut off "any kind of cooperation with China or with Chinese researchers".
"It's about being very much aware and making very conscious decisions about what parts of research you want to see Australia leave, and with whom," he said.
"Australia needs to be more involved"
Australia has only recently realised the global competition is heating up, according to Yun Jiang, the China Matters Fellow for the Australian Institute of International Affairs.
Despite government efforts to lure talent to Australia, the country is still too "slow" in this global competition compared to China, she claimed.
"Australia needs to be more involved and needs to be more coordinated in attracting talents," Ms Jiang said.
She has recently called for Australia to catch up with China's talent recruitment.
"We used to think Australia is a very attractive destination that everyone would naturally want to come to," she said.
"We [thought we didn't] have to put as much effort in attracting talents from overseas, because they would just want to come anyway."
Universities Australia acting chief executive Peter Chesworth said Australia is "home to hundreds of thousands of international students and researchers who make significant economic and social contributions to our nation".
"We're in regular contact with [the] government regarding visa processing and will continue to advocate for a transparent and smooth system that upholds integrity in our processes and supports our national security and future prosperity," Mr Chesworth said.
In a statement to the ABC, the Australian Academy of Science's president Chennupati Jagadish said Australia has a healthy science system with a "strong history of welcoming scientists from all backgrounds regardless of broader geopolitical matters".
"The academy welcomes efforts by governments to attract scientific talent to our shores, remove bureaucratic barriers and improve Australia's competitiveness in the global race for scientific talent," he said.
Back in the US, Professor Xi has returned to his research and teaching posts and has become an advocate against racial profiling by US law enforcement.
"I think, as Chinese American, as scientists, what we need to do is to talk to the public and educate them with facts, so that all the lies that politicians are telling would not have been accepted as truth, because they are not," he said.
He also warned people to "get prepared to live in a troubled world" for a long time, as geopolitical tensions rise.
"Freedom of movement is a fundamental human right, so wherever you decide to live, wherever you decide to work, is your right," he said.
"You just have to be aware of the pros and cons of any place that you want to settle down."
