Academic ties had been growing stronger, with top-ranked US colleges,—including Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Carnegie Mellon—hosting forums for Chinese investors. These were now put under new scrutiny. In January 2021, the FBI arrested MIT professor Gang Chen on allegations of federal grant fraud in January 2021. The charges were later dropped.

It was around this time that Michael decided to leave the US, returning to China to join a startup founded by a few friends. “At that time, China seemed to have more…