An increasing number of Chinese businesses are threatening think tanks and universities with legal action in an attempt to stop damaging research.
Here is more from the New York Times:
Chinese companies have sued or sent threatening legal letters to researchers in the United States, Europe and Australia close to a dozen times in recent years in an attempt to quash negative information, with half of those coming in the past two years. The unusual tactic borrows from a playbook used by corporations and celebrities to discourage damaging news coverage in the media.
The budding legal tactic by Chinese firms could silence critics who shed light on problematic business practices inside one of the most powerful countries in the world, researchers warn. The legal action is having a chilling effect on their work, they say, and in many cases straining the finances of their organizations.
One of the first examples occurred in 2019 when Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications giant, threatened to sue the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, an Australian think tank. ASPI had released a report containing allegations that servers provided by Huawei to a coalition of African nations were sending data to Shanghai.
Eric Sayers, who focuses on U.S.-Chinese technology policy at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, received a letter in September from lawyers demanding that he take down an opinion article he co-wrote about a Chinese drone company, Autel Robotics. The article, which was published by Defense News, a trade publication, said Chinese-made drones posed a national security risk because they could map American infrastructure.
In May, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University published a report by Anna Puglisi, a researcher who had recently departed. The report said the Chinese government was most likely involved in funding the growth of BGI, a Chinese biotechnology company.
In a June letter, BGI accused Ms. Puglisi of making defamatory claims and demanded that she retract the report.
For years, the Chinese government has used sanctions against Western think tanks and think tank experts.
