Comment by Jim Campbell
When they are tried and convicted there is little use in sending them back to China, the death sentence has a nice ring to it, but of course, they will impose the same penalties on those they dub as U.S. spies.
So life in prison with no possibility of parole would make a more reasonable position.
The Chinese would do the same, and since the U.S. State Department never negotiates with the enemy, a complete lie, ask Ollie North, the Prison system will have to get ready to serve dog as that’s what the Chinks eat.
Dog cooked stock photo. Image of food, asian, cooked – 35235314
dreamstime.com800 × 533
An American professor and NASA researcher has been charged with illegally using taxpayer-funded research grants while working under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party’s controversial “Thousand Talents Plan”- identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as “non-traditional espionage.”
The Thousand Talents Plan seeks to lure top scientific talent from the world – especially the U.S. – to aid China’s technological development, allowing the country to obtain a scientific cutting edge by deploying deceitful tactics such as intellectual property theft.
A NASA researcher and Texas A&M University professor has been charged with accepting federal grant money while hiding work he was doing for a university established by the Chinese government as well as his affiliation with Chinese-owned companies.
Zhengdong Cheng faces charges of wire fraud, conspiracy and false statements, according to a criminal complaint released by the Justice Department on Monday. He was arrested Sunday.
Researchers at American universities who are accused of concealing their professional relationships with Chinese institutions.
The Trump administration has been particularly concerned that professors could exploit their ties to China, and their participation in talent recruitment programs, to steal intellectual property for Beijing’s economic benefit.
Prosecutors accuse Cheng, who was hired by Texas A&M in 2004, of concealing his work in China even as his team of researchers received nearly $750,000 in grant money for space research.
NASA is restricted from using funds for any collaboration or coordination with China, Chinese institutions, or any Chinese-owned company.
But, prosecutors say, Cheng violated those restrictions by maintaining multiple undisclosed associations with China.
He served, for instance, as director of a soft matter institute at a technology university in Guangdong, China that was established by China’s Ministry of Education and he jointly formed a technology company dedicated to the design of microfluidic chips, according to the Justice Department.
And he participated in talent recruitment programs linked to the Chinese government that the U.S. says are meant to entice professors at American universities to steal cutting-edge research that can be provided to China.
“Your affiant believes that Cheng hid his association with China, Chinese-owned companies, and Chinese universities, which, according to NASA officials, if known to NASA, would have prohibited him from participating in the NASA grant and receiving U.S. Government funding through that grant,” an FBI agent wrote in charging documents.
John Sharp, chancellor of the Texas A&M system, said the university worked closely with the FBI on this case, “and we gladly will work with them again as needed.
“No one in higher education takes security as seriously as we do at The Texas A&M University System,” Sharp said in a statement.
“In fact, we have received several awards from the Department of Defense’s Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, including one just last month.”
Cheng’s voicemail box at the university was full and could not accept messages, and it was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.
The Justice Department will “continue seeking to bring participate in these talent programs to light,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers, the department’s top national security official, said in a statement.
U.S. Attorney Ryan Patrick, the top federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Texas, said the talent recruitment programs exploit “our open and free universities.”
“China is building economic and academic institutions with bricks stolen from others all around the world,” Patrick said in a statement.
The indictment reifies the Trump administration’s harsh rhetoric on tackling the Chinese Communist Party’s malign and far-reaching influence in American academia and comes on the heels of the State Department designating Chinese government-funded propaganda fronts known as “Confucius Institutes” as foreign missions.
THE END
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