At the Nexus of Military-Civil Fusion and Technological Innovation in China thediplomat.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thediplomat.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Image from a Department of Justice website.
On Jan. 14, with less than a week to go in the Trump administration, federal agents arrested a prominent mechanical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gang Chen.
Chen, prosecutors alleged, failed to disclose on a federal grant application various financial ties and affiliations with Chinese entities, including his participation in Chinese government talent programs and his service as an expert scientific consultant to the Chinese government omissions, or in federal prosecutors’ view, deliberate concealments that amounted to a scheme to defraud the federal government out of competitive grant funding that might not have been awarded to Chen had his ties to China been fully disclosed.
What the Fear of China Is Doing to American Science
A campaign against Chinese scientists threatens the openness that defines U.S. universities.
In what is becoming a familiar scene in American higher education, a Chinese-born scientist at a high-profile university was recently arrested for his ties to the Chinese government. About a month ago, Gang Chen, a naturalized American citizen and highly respected professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, was indicted by a grand jury for “failing to disclose contracts, appointments and awards from various entities in the People’s Republic of China.” Authorities say that Chen, who received U.S. Department of Energy grants for his research in nanotechnology, did not properly inform the agency about contracts entitling him to “hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct payments” from entities in China. Chen’s lawyers have responded aggressively, accusing U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling of making “false, highly inflamma