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The U.S. criminal indictment against Canadian Ishiang Shih grabs attention. It is not everyday, after all, that a professor at a prestigious university is charged with illegally exporting advanced technology to China.

But the now-retired McGill faculty member is just one among numerous scientists of Chinese descent caught up recently in a controversial American dragnet, its goal to combat economic espionage by Beijing.

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Researchers for private companies and universities have been chargedwith various crimes, as well as non-Chinese intelligence agents and civil servants. Others have been fired summarily. One Washington, D.C. lawyer says he represents three-dozen Chinese-American scientists who have been charged or put under suspicion by federal authorities.

They now feel unfairly scrutinized, stigmatized and on edge – because of their Chinese ethnicity alone

The U.S. Justice Department, which concentrated its efforts on the issue by launching a new “China Initiative” last year, says it’s trying to combat Beijing’s s well-documented campaign to acquire foreign technological secrets by any means.