Chinese Professor Found Guilty in U.S. of Economic Espionage
- Hao Zhang was charged in 2015 during Obama administration
- Prosecutors alleged he took trade secrets from two tech firms
Hao Zhang, a professor at Tianjin University in China, goes through security while arriving at federal court in San Jose, California, on Oct. 2, 2019.
Photographer: Michael Short/BloombergA Chinese professor was found guilty by a judge of trade-secret theft and and an even more serious and rarer charge of economic espionage, marking the latest conviction in the Trump administration’s pursuit of Chinese scientists and engineers.
At an unusual in-person courtroom hearing Friday during the coronavirus pandemic, a federal judge in San Jose, California, announced the verdict against Hao Zhang.
Arrested in 2015 when he flew to Los Angeles for a conference, Zhang was accused of conspiring with a colleague from the University of Southern California to steal and sell American secrets to the Chinese government and military through a shell company in the Cayman Islands.
Zhang was charged during an aggressive U.S. crackdown on Chinese theft of intellectual property that began under former President Barack Obama has continued under the Trump administration, which has applied heavy scrutiny to Chinese scientists doing research in the U.S. He faces up to 15 years in prison for economic espionage and 10 years for theft of trade secrets, according to a court filing.