Harvard professor’s trial a test of DOJ’s China prosecutions

By PHILIP MARCELO
Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — The trial of a Harvard University professor charged with hiding his ties to a Chinese-run recruitment program is the latest bellwether in the Justice Department’s controversial effort to crackdown on economic espionage by China. Opening statements are slated for Wednesday in the Boston trial of Charles Lieber, the former chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology. The case is among the highest profile to come from the U.S. Department of Justice’s “China Initiative,” which has faced concerns its harming academic research and amounts to racial profiling of Chinese scholars. Lieber’s lawyer didn’t comment but said last year that “the government has this wrong.”