US ties activities of arrested Chinese military officer to those by defendant in Boston case

US federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have tied the activities of an arrested Chinese military officer conducting research at the University of California to that of a Chinese defendant charged in another high-profile case, in what Washington sees as a coordinated pattern of spying.

The indictments reflect the US government's efforts to prevent advanced technologies developed in America from being transferred to China's military, as lawmakers and government officials all the way up to President Donald Trump warn of Beijing's attempts to undermine national security.

Xin Wang, who was charged with visa fraud on June 12 after being arrested while waiting for a flight from Los Angeles to Tianjin, "is not the only PLA officer who has entered the United States, funded by the [China Scholarship Council] and on false pretences, to collect information from the United States for the [People's Republic of China]", Nicola Hanna, US attorney for the Central District of California, said in an indictment.

"PLA Lieutenant, Yanqing Ye, was indicted in the District of Massachusetts with, among other things, visa fraud and acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government," according to the indictment, which was also signed by Christopher Grigg, chief of the Department of Justice's national security division.

Ye was one of two Chinese nationals arrested in January for lying about their links to the Chinese government. She studied and conducted research at the department of physics, chemistry, and biomedical engineering at Boston University's Center for Polymer Studies from 2017 to 2019.

Those indictments were announced together with that of Charles Lieber, the chairman of Harvard University's chemistry department, who was charged with lying about his participation in China's Thousand Talents Plan.

Xin Wang was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport. Photo: EPA-EFE alt=Xin Wang was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport. Photo: EPA-EFE

The Chinese embassy did not immediately respond to questions regarding the two defendants.

Last month, the White House announced restrictions on graduate students from China, targeting those "associated with entities in China that implement or support China's Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy, from using F or J visas to enter the United States".

Wang and Ye entered the US on J visas.

"Protecting the innovations, creations and inventions that power our country are vital to our economic prosperity and national security," Trump said in the announcement.

Wang's indictment said that his "conduct is consistent with the PRC's overall program of collecting US technological and scientific information through both espionage and individuals who use their professional positions to gain access to such information".

According to the complaint authorising Wang's arrest, the defendant holds a position in the People's Liberation Army that "roughly corresponds with the level of major" and continues to be paid by the PLA.

Wang had said on his visa application, completed in 2018, that his military service ended in 2016.

Similarly, the complaint against Ye said that she claimed on her US visa application, submitted in August 2017, to have ended her military service a month earlier. Ye admitted her PLA rank during an April 2019 interview with an FBI agent, as she was waiting for a flight back to China from Boston, it said. The Justice Department confirmed that Ye remains in China.

The FBI released a wanted poster for Ye Yanqing, who the Justice Department confirmed remains in China. alt=The FBI released a wanted poster for Ye Yanqing, who the Justice Department confirmed remains in China.

Prosecutors in Ye's case contend that Ye "was being directed by senior leaders of the PLA while conducting research at Boston University", working with two individuals identified as "co-conspirator A" and "co-conspirator B" at China's National University of Defence Technology.

Ye claimed to have had minimal contact with these individuals, but customs officials in Boston found evidence to the contrary, including "numerous WeChat conversations with Co-conspirator B", with one "focused on a risk assessment model designed to assist the PLA in deciphering data for military applications", according to the indictment against her.

Wang was on a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to study "the metabolic function of adipose tissue" " the scientific term for fat.

The indictment said that Wang was instructed by his supervisor in China, a lab director at the country's Fourth Military Medical University, to bring back information on how to "replicate" the UCSF lab where he conducted his research. Wang, prosecutors also contended, "had already sent UCSF research to his PRC laboratory via email".

The indictment also said that "Wang had wiped his personal phone of all WeChat messaging content" before arriving at the Los Angeles airport.

While both defendants are charged with visa fraud, Ye is also facing charges of making false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government, and conspiracy. Court dockets for the two defendants do not yet list any legal representation for either of them.

"There is no doubt that stealing technology and know how from universities, labs and companies is a key part of China's strategy," said Oriana Skylar Mastro, resident scholar at Washington-based think tank American Enterprise Institute. "This strategy is designed to fuel its domestic economy, support military modernisation efforts, and help Beijing become a global leader in key sectors laid out by [President Xi Jinping']s Made in China 2025."

The 2025 initiative, launched in 2015, aims to guide the country's industrial modernisation, including the substitution of foreign technology with innovation developed on the mainland.

"While we cannot say definitely whether these two individuals are a part of this broader strategy, we know that such a strategy exists," said Skylar Mastro, who is also an assistant professor at Georgetown University. "It's unfortunate that this means greater scrutiny for Chinese nationals that come to the US to do research, most of whom are not here under false pretences."

Corri Zoli, director of research at the Institute for Security Policy & Law at Syracuse University in New York, went further: "I can't imagine that the Chinese government would be sending active-duty military officers to academic tech programmes, who are on their payroll and engaging is some sort of transfer of research technology, and they're not somehow involved" in an orchestrated tech transfer strategy, she said.

"These efforts are very much a kind of fourth-generation warfare or information-warfare-type strategy, and this is the way of our contemporary world," Zoli added.

"It's not just China doing this. It's everybody. This is the way that we're evolving into a new battlespace, but China happens to be very, very effective at it."

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2020 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.