MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-08-22 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] The Chinese technological threat and recruitment
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wsj.com
WSJ News Exclusive | How China Targets Scientists via Global Network of
Recruiting Stations
Kate O’Keeffe and Aruna Viswanatha
8-11 minutes
WASHINGTON—China is targeting top scientific and technological expertise
in the U.S. and other advanced nations through an expanding network of
600 talent-recruitment stations world-wide, a new report partly funded
by the U.S. State Department has found.
U.S. officials have long warned that China uses recruitment programs to
improperly obtain advanced technology. However, the research conducted
by an Australian think tank details the little-known but elaborate
infrastructure the Chinese Communist Party uses to recruit scientists
from organizations such as Tesla Inc. and Harvard University through
such programs.
Beijing has denied attempting any systematic effort to steal U.S.
scientific research, and Chinese state media have said the U.S. is using
allegations of intellectual-property theft as a political tool. The
Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t immediately respond to a
request for comment.
The talent programs, such as the Thousand Talents Plan, are supported by
600 recruitment stations in countries around the world. They include
Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan, according to
the report published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a
nonpartisan think tank created by the Australian government. The U.S.
has the most with at least 146 stations, the report said.
Though China began opening the stations by 2006, it has greatly
accelerated the program in recent years, according to the report by
analyst Alex Joske. Of the 600 total stations identified, more than 115
were established in 2018 alone, it said.
Chinese officials typically contract out the operation of the stations
to local groups like hometown, business, professional and alumni
associations; technology and education companies; and Chinese Students
and Scholars Associations at university campuses, the report said. They
pay the groups the equivalent of as much as $29,000 for each individual
they recruit on top of as much as $22,000 a year for general operating
costs, it said.
The recruitment stations, which organize trips for scientists to visit
China, often operate in concert with China’s State Administration of
Foreign Experts Affairs and the United Front Work Department. The unit
within China’s ruling Communist Party engages thousands of organizations
to collect intelligence, encourage technology transfer, counter
dissident movements and generate support for other Beijing objectives.
The Chinese military’s recruitment of scientists is supported by the
same network of international recruitment stations and party-linked
organizations, the report said.
The research also sheds light on the leading role provincial, municipal
and district governments play in China’s talent recruitment efforts.
International attention has thus far focused on programs run at the
national level, such as the Thousand Talents Plan. However, the report
said, more than 80% of talent-recruitment programs are run at the
subnational level and may attract as many as seven times as many
scientists as the national programs.
Only 20 of the 600 total recruitment stations identified in the report
were established by national organizations, such as the United Front
Work Department’s Western Returned Scholars Association and Overseas
Chinese Affairs Office, it said.
The relationship between the U.S. and China has been sliding downhill at
an alarming rate in recent weeks. WSJ’s Gerald F. Seib highlights three
reasons why the ties between the two countries will be a major debate
topic on the run up to election day. Photo: Aly Song/Reuters
While participating in a foreign talent program isn’t illegal, U.S.
officials require participants to disclose such ties if they apply for
U.S. taxpayer-supported funding. U.S. authorities also say the Chinese
programs often provide incentives to steal intellectual property and
create conflicts of interest and commitment—especially when the
scientists maintain their positions in the U.S. while doing short stints
in China or running parallel labs there.
China’s efforts to attract talent and obtain technology have become a
lightning rod in the broader conflict between the U.S. and China. The
Justice Department has brought a series of cases against talent-program
participants and Chinese military researchers for allegedly lying about
their work with China or status with the People’s Liberation Army.
Tesla Inc. sued a former engineer, Cao Guangzhi, last year for allegedly
taking self-driving technology source code to a U.S. affiliate of
Chinese rival Guangzhou Xiaopeng Motors Technology Co. His past
activities indicate “a pattern of cooperation” for a decade with China’s
talent recruitment network, the report said.
Mr. Cao admitted he uploaded Tesla files to a personal iCloud account,
but said he tried to delete them before he left and denied any harm to
Tesla. The case is scheduled for a January trial.
A spokesman for Xiaopeng said “Xmotors is not aware of Mr. Cao’s out of
office activities, nor are we party to the Tesla case.” Representatives
for Tesla and Mr. Cao didn’t immediately return requests for comment.
Tesla sued a former engineer, Cao Guangzhi, last year for allegedly
taking self-driving technology source code to a Chinese rival.
Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News
As a graduate student at Purdue University in 2009, Mr. Cao established
an Association of Wenzhou Ph.D.s. The group worked closely with Wenzhou
officials to identify U.S. doctoral students from the area and signed an
agreement with the United Front Work Department in Wenzhou to run a
talent-recruitment station, the report said.
The association grew to exceed 100 members, including U.S. government
employees and engineers from Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Apple Inc. and
other top technology companies, the report said. The association also
helped a university in Wenzhou recruit a scientist from the Argonne
National Laboratory in Illinois, according to the report.
A representative for the Energy Department, which oversees national labs
including Argonne, said in a statement: “While international
collaboration is essential to accelerate research and development, some
governments, like the Chinese Communist Party, are aggressively pursuing
access to foreign science and technology advancements and intellectual
property to the detriment of our economic prosperity and security.”
Google and Apple didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The report said the Chinese government-run infrastructure underpinning
the talent-recruitment programs contradicts a theory espoused by some
counterintelligence professionals. The theory holds that China uses a
“thousand grains of sand” approach to intelligence gathering and
economic espionage, relying on uncoordinated waves of amateur
ethnic-Chinese individuals to scoop up technology.
“It isn’t an ethnic program with individual actors at its core—it’s a
CCP program leveraging incentives as well as organised recruitment
activity,” wrote Mr. Joske. He urged officials to focus more on the
mechanisms the Chinese Communist Party uses to recruit talent than on
the individuals recruited to the programs.
The report calls the Justice Department case against Harvard Professor
Charles Lieber, a nanotechnologist with no Chinese heritage, “one of the
most egregious” examples of alleged misconduct related to a
talent-recruitment program.
Mr. Lieber was arrested earlier this year on charges of misleading U.S.
agencies about his participation in China’s Thousand Talents Plan, while
they were spending more than $15 million to fund his research group
here. He has pleaded not guilty.
Write to Kate O’Keeffe at kathryn.okeeffe-at-wsj.com and Aruna Viswanatha
at Aruna.Viswanatha-at-wsj.com
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