While a lot of things are going wrong, one thing that is going right is the crackdown on Communist China’s infiltration of our research centers. The latest developments include a whole lot of firings and another arrest. The message is going out that you can’t work in the US and work for the CCP at the same time.

Some 54 scientists have resigned or been fired as a result of an ongoing investigation by the National Institutes of Health into the failure of NIH grantees to disclose financial ties to foreign governments. In 93% of those cases, the hidden funding came from a Chinese institution.

The new numbers come from Michael Lauer, NIH’s head of extramural research. Lauer had previously provided some information on the scope of NIH’s investigation, which had targeted 189 scientists at 87 institutions. But his presentation today to a senior advisory panel offered by far the most detailed breakout of an effort NIH launched in August 2018 that has roiled the U.S. biomedical community, and resulted in criminal charges against some prominent researchers, including Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard University’s department of chemistry and chemical biology.

“It’s not what we had hoped, and it’s not a fun task,” NIH Director Francis Collins said in characterizing the ongoing investigation. He called the data “sobering.”

In the vast majority of cases, Lauer reported, the person being investigated has been an Asian man in his 50s. Some three-quarters of those under investigation had active NIH grants, and nearly half had at least two grants. The 285 active grants totaled $164 million.

China is seeding its personnel here, and the Communists are clever enough that before long, they’re going to begin playing the race card. 

Meanwhile one CBP arrest has led to a pretty thorough confession by a CCP major.

Xin Wang, the researcher, entered the US in March 2019 on a multiple entry J1 non-immigrant visa in order to conduct scientific research at the University of California, San Francisco. While Wang had claimed on his visa application that he had been an Associate Professor in Medicine in the PLA, he told Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the Los Angeles airport that he was still a “Level 9” technician in the PLA and employed at a military university lab.

Wang’s position roughly corresponds with the rank of Major, according to a statement by the US Department of Justice.

While in the US, Wang received compensation from the PLA and the China Scholarship Council, in addition to compensation from the University of California.

That is to say, California and American taxpayers.

The researcher also told CBP that his supervisor had told him to observe the layout of the University of California lab and bring back information on how to replicate it in China.

Wang was bringing studies with him from the University of California lab to share with his PLA colleagues and had already sent research to China via email, according to the DOJ statement. He also told his supervising professor in California that he had duplicated some of that professor’s work at the lab in China.

CBP vs CCP is thus far a victory for that agency that Elizabeth Warren and her radical Marxist colleagues want to destroy.