China’s ambassador to the United States and a top Chinese diplomat in New York City have been facilitating their nation’s covert recruitment of scientists working in the United States, according to an FBI affidavit filed in federal court last year.
The document, which was unsealed by a judge in April, provides an extraordinary window into China’s pursuit of U.S. trade secrets, shedding new light on its government-directed efforts to obtain “the fruits of cutting-edge American scientific research…which efforts involve intellectual property thefts on a massive scale.”
An FBI special agent specializing in counterintelligence who signed the affidavit said the bureau received information that a Connecticut scientist was “knowingly and willfully working in the United States on behalf of government-controlled and government-directed entities for the purpose of recruiting high-level molecular geneticists and stem cell researchers to work at state-controlled universities and laboratories in [China], and for the purpose of acquiring and transferring to those state-controlled universities and laboratories, cutting-edge molecular genetics and stem-cell research and technology developed at leading academic and private sector research platforms in the United States.”