A retired military surgeon, he blew the whistle in 2003 on Beijing’s cover-up of the epidemic. He was later punished for denouncing the Tiananmen Square crackdown.Dr. Jiang Yanyong, a prominent military surgeon who became a national hero for exposing the Chinese government’s cover-up of the SARS epidemic in 2003, but was later punished for denouncing the Tiananmen Square crackdown, died on Saturday. He was 91.His death was widely reported by Chinese-language media in Hong Kong and abroad, as well as by friends in China, who shared a notice on social media saying he had succumbed to pneumonia and other illnesses. Two friends of his family told The New York Times that they had confirmed his death with relatives, but both asked not to be identified, fearing recriminations.Chinese state media have not confirmed the news of Dr. Jiang’s death, which is not uncommon for a politically sensitive figure.In the spring of 2003, alarmed to hear health officials downplaying the threat of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, Dr. Jiang sent a letter to several news organizations refuting the official story. His revelations prompted China’s top leaders to acknowledge that they had provided false information about the epidemic and to begin a nationwide effort to battle it, saving countless lives.“I was telling the truth,” Dr. Jiang later recalled in a 2013 interview with the state-run Beijing News. “I believed the government would treat me fairly.”It did, at least for a while, hailing Dr. Jiang as a hero. But nearly two decades later, the Chinese authorities would go on to virtually repeat the cover-up with the outbreak of Covid-19.Dr. Jiang was retired in 2003 when he heard that many Beijing hospitals, including the elite military hospital where he had worked, were dealing with a surge in patients infected with the SARS virus. By then, SARS was already a full-blown epidemic, spreading to multiple countries and infecting more than 1,000 people in Hong Kong and southern China alone.So it came as a shock to Dr. Jiang when China’s top health minister, Zhang Wenkang, appeared on television, saying that Beijing had only 12 cases of SARS and three deaths.“You are safe here whether you wear the mask or not,” Mr. Zhang said. “Beijing is perfectly safe to visit for business or pleasure.”Stunned by those blatantly misleading remarks, Dr. Jiang sat down the next day and wrote his letter, saying that there were already over 100 cases in Beijing alone. The lanky, elderly doctor accused Mr. Zhang, who had also been trained as a military doctor, of “abandoning even his most basic standards of integrity as a doctor.”A waitress, left, being admitted to the SARS ward of a hospital in Guangzhou, in southern China, in 2004.China Photo ASW, via ReutersAs a Communist Party member who held a rank corresponding to major general in the United States, Dr. Jiang was taking a huge risk. Nonetheless, he signed his name and sent the letter off to several local media outlets. Foreign journalists soon caught wind of it, and Time magazine broke the news.The impact was immediate.World Health Organization inspectors quickly extended a trip to Beijing to inspect the hospitals where Dr. Jiang said there were hidden cases, putting pressure on the government. Chinese leaders fired Mr. Zhang, the health minister, and the mayor of Beijing.For a brief period, Dr. Jiang received nationwide acclaim. One local magazine called him the “honest doctor.”“His goal wasn’t to make China lose face,” his daughter, Jiang Rui, said later in an interview. “He just saw that he had a chance to save lives.”But the next year, emboldened by his new political capital, he wrote a letter to top Chinese leaders, calling on them to acknowledge that the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests had been wrong, and that the student movement had in fact been a “patriotic movement.”Dr. Jiang wrote about what he’d seen at No. 301 Military Hospital in Beijing on the night that tanks rolled into the square and People’s Liberation Army soldiers began shooting indiscriminately at student protesters. Scores of wounded civilians were rushed to the hospital, he said. Many had been hit by bullets designed to break apart after impact and shred internal organs.It was the bloodiest night of his decades-long career.“My brain buzzed and I almost passed out,” he recalled. “Lying before me this time were our own people, killed by children of the Chinese people, with weapons given to them by the people.”Soon after the letter became public, Dr. Jiang and his wife were detained. He was forced to undergo lengthy interrogation and indoctrination sessions. For years, he was barred from leaving China and periodically subjected to monitoring, harassment and house arrest. He all but disappeared from public view.World Health Organization experts in 2004, checking a building where SARS was suspected to have been spread. China Photos ASW, via ReutersJiang Yanyong was born on Oct. 4, 1931, in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou to a wealthy banking family. Growing up in Shanghai, he resolved to become a doctor after watching his aunt succumb to tuberculosis. In 1949, the year Mao Zedong’s Communists took power, he enrolled in Yenching University to study medicine and went on to train at Peking Union Medical College, the country’s most prestigious medical school.Inspired by Norman Bethune, a Canadian doctor who died on the front lines of the Communist resistance to the Japanese occupation in 1939, he enlisted in the People’s Liberation Army and specialized in surgery. In 1957, he was assigned to No. 301 Hospital in Beijing.He became known for his precision, steady hands and willingness to take on difficult cases, earning him the nickname “Brave Jiang.”But his idealism didn’t last long. In 1966, Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution, the decade-long period of chaos that upended Chinese society. Groups of militant youths known as Red Guards roved the country, determined to root out “class enemies.” Dr. Jiang, whose father had been a banker and whose cousin was an official in the rival Nationalist party in Taiwan, was an easy target.Branded a counterrevolutionary, he was imprisoned, beaten and later sent to a prison farm for five years in the remote deserts of Qinghai Province in western China, away from his wife and children. After he was politically rehabilitated in the early 1970s, he returned to No. 301 hospital, where he eventually worked his way up to chief of surgery.He retired in the early 2000s, but he continued to treat patients and mentor younger doctors. In 2004, he was awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in recognition of his “brave stand for truth in China, spurring lifesaving measures to confront and contain the deadly threat of SARS.”In addition to Ms. Jiang, his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Hua Zhongwei, and a son, Jiang Qing.Dr. Jiang never backed down on the subject of Tiananmen Square. In 2019, before the 30th anniversary of the crackdown, he wrote a letter to Xi Jinping, China’s leader, again demanding justice for the “crime” of 1989. Soon after, the 87-year-old doctor was again under house arrest.Like others who challenged Communist Party policy, he was largely erased from the official record, and he was sometimes painted as a wrongdoer for having spoken out.A multiple-choice question posed by a test-prep school in 2017 asked about his decision to come forward about SARS. The “correct” answer was B: Doing so was wrong because it harmed the interests of the nation, the society and the community, and he should be subject to legal punishment.“All I did was say a few honest things,” said Dr. Jiang, pictured in 2004. Hu Jia/Associated PressSuch priorities still seemed to hold sway in late 2019, when a new coronavirus was emerging in China. A doctor in the central city of Wuhan, Li Wenliang, posted a warning to a group of fellow doctors about the still-unidentified disease, which he said resembled the SARS virus.The government reprimanded Dr. Li and forced him to renounce his warning. As the epidemic grew, government officials continued to underplay the coronavirus’s threat, delaying efforts to contain it, with global ramifications.When Dr. Li died of Covid, he was mourned across China as someone who had spoken truth to power, as Dr. Jiang had done before him.“I’m not a hero,” Dr. Jiang said in the 2013 interview. “All I did was say a few honest things.”“If everyone spoke the truth, then there would be nothing to hide,” he added. “If everyone spoke the truth, the country would naturally be better off.”Chris Buckley

A chilling effect has taken hold on American campuses, contributing to an outflow of academic talent that may hurt the United States while benefiting Beijing.The F.B.I. agents spent nearly two years tailing the professor, following him to work, to the grocery store, and even keeping his college-age son under surveillance. They told the university where he held a tenured position that he was a Chinese operative, prompting the school to cooperate with their investigation and later fire him.But the F.B.I. was unable to find evidence of espionage, according to an agent’s testimony in court.Federal prosecutors pressed charges anyway, accusing Anming Hu of concealing his ties with a university in Beijing and defrauding the government in connection with research funds he had received from NASA. The trial ended in a hung jury. One juror called the case “ridiculous.” In September, a judge took the rare step of acquitting the Chinese-born scientist on all counts.“It was the darkest time of my life,” Dr. Hu said in his first in-depth interview since being acquitted.Universities in the United States once welcomed the best and brightest scientific talents from around the world. But government officials have become increasingly suspicious that scientists like Dr. Hu are exploiting the openness of American institutions to steal sensitive taxpayer-funded research at the behest of the Chinese government. It’s had a chilling effect across campuses that scientists and university administrators say has slowed research and contributed to a flow of talent out of the United States that may benefit Beijing.In interviews with several scientists of Chinese descent working in American universities, a picture emerged of a community on edge. Some described being humiliated by mandatory training on foreign interference that featured only examples of ethnic Chinese scientists, and unexplained delays for visa renewals. They were all concerned that seemingly anything — a collaboration with another scientist from China, a slip-up on a disclosure form — could provide an opening for federal investigators to come knocking.The trial of Dr. Hu, who worked at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, is being held up as a clear example of government overreach. He was under house arrest for 18 months during the investigation with no job or income, reliant on GoFundMe donations for his legal defense fees. Neighbors and church friends delivered groceries and took out his garbage. While the university has since offered to reinstate his job, Dr. Hu, a naturalized Canadian citizen, said his immigration status remains in limbo.“My basic human rights were invaded, my reputation was destroyed, my heart was deeply hurt, my family was hurt,” he said. “This is not fairness.”Anming Hu at home in Knoxville, Tenn. The Chinese-born scientist and professor has spent the last few years fighting accusations that he acted as a spy for China.Shawn Poynter for The New York TimesA recent study conducted by the University of Arizona and the Committee of 100, an organization of prominent Chinese Americans, surveyed scientists of both Chinese and non-Chinese descent working at academic institutions in the United States on issues of race and ethnicity in science and research. Around half of the Chinese scientists surveyed — including some American citizens — said they felt they were being surveilled by the U.S. government. Some have blamed a law enforcement program called the China Initiative, which was started during the Trump administration and has continued under President Biden.The program is aimed at preventing the Chinese government’s theft of American trade secrets and other acts of espionage. But scholars, scientists, civil rights groups and lawmakers have asked whether it has gone too far in targeting academics, especially since most research done at universities is unclassified and eventually published.Nearly 2,000 academics at institutions including Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley and Princeton University have signed open letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland expressing concerns that the initiative disproportionately targets researchers of Chinese descent and urging that the program be terminated.“So much of our intellectual technological power is from immigrants,” said Steven Chu, one of the signers, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at Stanford University and a former U.S. secretary of energy. “We’re shooting ourselves not in the foot but in something close to the head.”Dr. Hu was the first academic charged under the China Initiative to stand trial. So far the F.B.I. has brought 12 prosecutions at universities or research institutions in three years, but none have involved charges of economic espionage or theft of trade secrets or intellectual property. Most involved allegations like wire fraud, lying to federal investigators and failure to disclose ties with China.Behind the recent scrutiny of academics is a problem years in the making.Over the past two decades, as federal funding for basic scientific research at universities stagnated, scientists sought alternative sources of money. Eager to expand their global footprint, American universities promoted collaborations with international peers, including in China. Beijing, which has set its sights on becoming a science and technology superpower, was happy to oblige.Researchers took advantage of growing opportunities in China, including talent recruitment programs, lucrative consulting contracts, honorary titles and grants.But the Chinese government sometimes used these relationships to steal or incentivize the transfer of intellectual property from American companies. As the Trump administration intensified scrutiny of espionage by China, it expanded the dragnet to include academic collaboration, prompting federal agencies that provide funding — and some universities — to step up enforcement of policies on the disclosure of foreign ties and conflicts of interest.In recent months, academics have signed open letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland, center, urging that the China Initiative program be terminated.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“There’s no room for xenophobia or ethnic profiling,” said Anna Puglisi, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. “But what gets lost in the discussion is the bigger question that we need to be asking, which is: ‘Do we have the system in place to mitigate the behavior and central government policies of a nation state that are specifically set up to target the seams in our system?’”To some, the intensified scrutiny amounted to overreach.Many scientists have expressed frustration over what they say are shifting and overlapping disclosure guidelines from universities and funding agencies that make it hard to avoid getting caught in the F.B.I.’s web. During Dr. Hu’s trial, for example, it emerged that both NASA and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville had provided unclear rules on how he should disclose foreign ties.Understand U.S.-China RelationsCard 1 of 6A tense era in U.S.-China ties.