A former University of Tennessee professor accused of hiding his ties with a Chinese university to get federal research funds has been acquitted of all charges. U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Varlan on Thursday acquitted Anming Hu, a 52-year-old citizen of Canada charged with wire fraud and making false statements, of all charges, saying that the U.S. government hadn’t proven its case. Hu’s case was part of the Justice Department’s “China Initiative,” an effort started under the Trump administration to identify and prosecute individuals stealing intellectual property from American colleges and universities on behalf of the Chinese communist regime. Hu was first indicted in February 2020. The indictment alleges that beginning in 2016, Hu intentionally provided false statements to the University of Tennessee (UT) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to hide his affiliation with Beijing University of Technology (BJUT), one of 76 top-tier universities directly administered by …