It seems like every consumer product that is not produce or an automobile has a “Made in China” label on—I remember when people used to “joke” about “Made in Japan”—and this might not merely be how the “free market” has shaken out, but deliberate policy to weaken U.S. and Western economies. CNBC reported last month that “For years, corporate America largely saw theft by the Chinese government and state-run companies as an attempt to catch up with advanced U.S. technology. But officials now say the effort is more nefarious than generally understood, viewing — in many cases — an adversary that wants to eliminate the American companies they are targeting, not just narrow the gap between Chinese firms and their U.S. competition.”
It has become increasingly clear that China has flouted international norms of behavior and cooperation for the single-minded purpose of nationalistic narcissism. In his book “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order,” Rush Doshi opines that
Politically, Beijing would project leadership over global governance and international institutions, split Western alliances, and advance autocratic norms at the expense of liberal ones. Economically, it would weaken the financial advantages that underwrite US hegemony and seize the commanding heights of the “fourth industrial revolution” from artificial intelligence to quantum computing, with the United States declining into a “deindustrialized, English-speaking version of a Latin American republic, specializing in commodities, real estate, tourism, and perhaps transnational tax evasion.”8 Militarily, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would field a world-class force with bases around the world that could defend China’s interests in most regions and even in new domains like space, the poles, and the deep sea. The fact that aspects of this vision are visible in high-level speeches is strong evidence that China’s ambitions are not limited to Taiwan or to dominating the Indo-Pacific. The “struggle for mastery,” once confined to Asia, is now over the global order and its future. If there are two paths to hegemony—a regional one and a global one—China is now pursuing both.
A lot of people in this country still seem to believe that the Chinese presence in this country is “benign,” and welcome its “investment”—or buying outright American companies, making them no longer “American.” Of course it is wrong to presume that “all” people of Chinese origin residing in this country have less than “patriotic” motivations for being here. Unfortunately, it is a question increasingly of “patriotism” for what country. FBI director Christopher Wray said in a recent interview that China is becoming more brazen in its espionage activities in recent years, with the FBI opening a new investigation every 12 hours. Of course the U.S. also has its own spying activities going, with the difference being that it is easier to spy on an “open” society like the U.S. as opposed to a closed one like China’s.
China’s intelligence operations can also seem to be “benign” at first look, like cheap cell phone networks for rural areas that happen to be near nuclear missile sites or other military installations. Or it could be the purchase of land near military installations or U.S. government buildings without obvious commercial purpose.
In 2017, China offered to build an “ornate” garden in the National Arboretum in Washington D.C., which was at first greeted with enthusiasm—until it was discovered that its proposed location was perfectly suited for espionage activities, with building materials to be shipped from China in “diplomatic pouches” which U.S. customs is barred from inspecting.
The FBI has a special webpage here https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/the-china-threat that links to stories on the Department of Justice’s public affairs webpage on Chinese espionage which is shockingly lengthy. Just a handful of reports shows that it isn’t always an easy matter to determine the difference between “friend” and “foe,” since many of the people engaged in espionage and technology theft are technically U.S. citizens of Chinese heritage or birth.
The most recent case involves two U.S. Navy sailors “accused of having passed along national defense information to Chinese intelligence officials in return for cash payments…Jinchao "Patrick" Wei, a 22-year-old petty officer 2nd class, was arrested Wednesday and charged with espionage -- more specifically, conspiracy to and committing the communication of defense information to aid a foreign government…Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, of Monterey Park, California, was also arrested Wednesday, by FBI and NCIS agents, and is charged with conspiracy and receipt of a bribe by a public official, officials said, according to Zhao's indictment.”
We are told that Wei’s mother actually encouraged her son to do espionage work against the U.S., in the belief that he might be offered a high-level position in the Chinese government. Wei was born in China and only became a U.S. citizen last year, so we can see there was an apparent “confusion” about where his “patriotism” lie. There has been no indication that Wei’s mother will be arrested for espionage, although we may suspect she was his “handler” in more ways than one.
In other recent cases, in January 2021 Gang
Chen “A professor and researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
was charged and arrested today in connection with failing to disclose
contracts, appointments and awards from various entities in the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) to the U.S. Department of Energy." Why would he be trying to hide this information? To gain access to technology secrets that he could transfer to his Chinese government handlers?
In February 2021,
Li Chen, “A former Dublin, Ohio woman was sentenced in U.S. District Court today to 30 months in prison for conspiring to steal exosome-related trade secrets concerning the research, identification and treatment of a range of pediatric medical conditions…Chen and her husband, co-conspirator Yu Zhou, 50, worked in separate medical research labs at the Research Institute for 10 years each (Zhou from 2007 until 2017 and Chen from 2008 until 2018). They pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal at least five trade secrets related to exosome research from Nationwide Children’s Hospital… Court documents detail that Chen conspired to steal and then monetize one of the trade secrets by creating and selling exosome “isolation kits.” Chen started a company in China to sell the kits.”
In May 2020, Song Guo Zheng, “A rheumatology professor and researcher with strong ties to China was sentenced to 37 months in prison for making false statements to federal authorities as part of an immunology research fraud scheme.” Zheng was arrested as he was attempting to escape by plane in Alaska. “When he was arrested, Zheng was carrying three large bags, one small suitcase and a briefcase containing two laptops, three cell phones, several USB drives, several silver bars, expired Chinese passports for his family, deeds for property in China and other items.”
In June 2021, came another arrest:
As a senior NASA scientist with access to sensitive and confidential U.S. government technologies and intellectual property, Meyya Meyyappan was understandably subject to restrictions regarding outside employment and compensation. When questioned by the FBI and NASA, Meyyappan gave false statements regarding his employment by a Chinese government-funded program that recruited individuals with access to foreign technologies and intellectual property. The privilege of access to cutting edge U.S. technologies and intellectual property comes with the critical responsibility of protecting their secrecy. Meyyappan betrayed that trust, by failing to disclose his foreign activities and then compounding his mistakes by lying to the FBI and NASA. He has now been sentenced to time in federal prison for his unlawful conduct.
In January 2022, “Lucy Xi, 44, formerly a resident of Malvern, PA, pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to benefit a Chinese pharmaceutical company named Renopharma. Lucy Xi’s co-defendants, Yu Xue, Tao Li and Yan Mei, established Renopharma supposedly to research and develop anti-cancer drugs. In reality, though, the company was used as a repository of information stolen from GSK. Renopharma received financial support and subsidies from the government of China.”
Also in January 2022, “Xiang Haitao, 44, a Chinese national formerly residing in Chesterfield, Missouri, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to commit economic espionage. According to court documents, Xiang conspired to steal a trade secret from Monsanto, an international company based in St. Louis, for the purpose of benefitting a foreign government, namely the People’s Republic of China.
January 2022 was a "busy" month: Simon Saw-Teong Ang, "An Arkansas man and University
of Arkansas Professor pleaded guilty today to one count of making a false
statement to the FBI about the existence of patents for his inventions in the
People’s Republic of China (PRC)." The next question is whether he is a professional stealer of other people's patents.
In February 2022,
A telecommunications company conspired with former employees of Chicago-based Motorola Solutions Inc. to steal digital mobile radio technology developed by Motorola, according to an indictment unsealed today in federal court in Chicago. According to the indictment, Motorola Solutions developed the DMR technology through years of research and design. Motorola Solutions marketed and sold the radios, which are sometimes referred to as “walkie-talkies,” in the United States and elsewhere. The indictment alleges that China-based HYTERA COMMUNICATIONS CORP. LTD. recruited and hired Motorola Solutions employees and directed them to take proprietary and trade secret information from Motorola without authorization. The charges allege that while still employed at Motorola, some of the employees allegedly accessed the trade secret information from Motorola’s internal database and sent multiple emails describing their intentions to use the technology at Hytera.
In September 2022, “Peter Kisang Kim, a former Broadcom Inc. engineer, was sentenced to eight months in prison for trade secret theft involving Broadcom trade secrets…in the days before he left Broadcom, Kim copied more than 500 Broadcom files from its document repository system. In pleading to trade secret theft, he admitted to possessing Broadcom trade secrets related to the Trident family of chips, including those contained in test plans, design verification environment files, and design specifications.”
In May 2022,
Chenyan Wu and Lianchun Chen, a married couple who worked as research scientists for a major American pharmaceutical company, pleaded guilty in federal court today to criminal charges stemming from their efforts to gather confidential mRNA research from that company to advance the husband’s competing laboratory research in China…According to her plea agreement, from as early as November 2013, through at least June 2018, Chen repeatedly accessed Company A computers and copied confidential Company A materials. She knew she was not allowed to copy these materials, much less provide them to an individual outside the company. Chen emailed those confidential Company A materials to her husband in China over her personal Hotmail account.”
Wu, having apparently "created" the technology on his "own" in China, then
In February 2021, "Wu shut down TheraMab in China and attempted to move his laboratory to the United States. He packed up its contents into five suitcases…Upon entry into the United States, Wu filled out a U.S. Customs form. He did not declare any biological or chemical items on the form, nor did he declare these items in person to the Customs officer while going through Customs Inspection…Initial inspection revealed about 700 to 1,000 unlabeled centrifuge tubes, which appeared to contain proteins and multiple containers of lab chemicals…one bottle contained a warning photo with the skull and crossbones image and the words 'harmful if swallowed … toxic if inhaled.' Another bottle contained the warning statements 'fatal if inhaled … harmful if swallowed.' Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials seized all five suitcases."
Besides technology theft, the Chinese government and its intelligence apparatus have been charged with setting up illegal “secret police” offices in the U.S. to harass, detain or forcibly “repatriate” dissidents or those who otherwise have expressed views not looked upon favorably by the PRC. The police operating from these illegal offices predictably do not report themselves as agents of a foreign government, as required. This is all part of a Chinese government campaign called “Operation Fox Hunt,” which operates around the world hunting down “fugitives.”
And, lest we "forget," China is the world's principle source of fentanyl and/or its constituent ingredients which are used to manufacture the drug in other countries. Should we be "surprised" to learn that Wuhan is considered the "epicenter" of Chinese fentanyl production?
As noted, it isn’t an obvious thing to know who is “loyal” to whom when it comes to the Chinese presence, let alone that involving Chinese nationals or recent "legal residents." The numbers involved in espionage and technology theft may be "small," but their impact on the country is potentially huge and devastating to the long-term "survival" of this country.
After all, we shouldn't see China as merely a “competitor”
anymore; it intends on being the only “super power” in a world which bends before it on its knees through economic coercion. Why should we be making it easier
for them to do that—and that includes voting for nutcases in government and
allowing a violent mob to try to overturn an election, which China sees as weakness? How can we know what the enemy is when we have far-right types trying to claw people's eyes out so they are blind to that future?
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