Global Times, a Chinese state-run media outlet, accused the U.S. of “racism” for arresting Massachusetts Institute of Technolgoy Professor Gang Chen for hiding contracts with the Chinese Communist Party while taking millions of taxpayer dollars in the form of federal research grants. 

The Department of Justice press release notes that Chen failed to disclose he was “promoting China’s technological and scientific development by providing advice and expertise — sometimes directly to Chinese government officials — and often in exchange for financial compensation.”

Continuing to quote Rao Yi, a Chinese neurobiologist, the article adds that “MIT will be implicated in one of the worst cases of academic racism in the 21st century” if the university fails to support Chen.

The paper, operated and owned by the repressive Chinese Communist Party, amplified the claims of Rao:

Reviewing grants from other countries is a regular activity. If failure to report the reviewing for the Chinese association is a crime, then almost all MIT professors could be charged with reviewing for funding agencies of Israeli, Italian, or British governments. Singling out a science foundation of China as a government agency is simply racism as all major governments have science foundations, Rao wrote. 

“The root of the problem is, of course, known to all of us: Trumpism has fundamentally eroded morality in the US. Much has to be done for the US to recover from Trumpism. The entire world has witnessed how few US politicians have spines, in front of Trump and his lies,” Rao also noted.

“We certainly hope that MIT, a beacon of academic excellence and freedom, will hold its head high and show its spine in front of a racist Boston FBI and its agents in defending Dr. Chen. This is for Dr. Chen, but it is also, if not more, for MIT,” the paper adds.