The China Initiative, announced with great fanfare by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in November 2019, was supposed to combat the national security threat posed by China by focusing prosecutorial attention on “identifying and prosecuting those engaged in trade secret theft, hacking and economic espionage.”

According to Sessions, “Chinese economic espionage against the United States has been increasing and it has been increasing rapidly. Enough is enough. We’re not taking it anymore.” Sessions announced a task force dedicated to rooting out the suspected evil-doers who were targeting American intellectual property.