Originally published on July 27, 2020.
Drawing on a U.S. Senate report on China’s Thousand Talents Plan, this chapter describes allegations that participating scientists were required to work for China, keep their contracts secret, recruit postdoctoral researchers, transfer intellectual-property rights to sponsoring Chinese institutions, and establish “shadow laboratories” reproducing research conducted in the United States.
It also discusses investigations involving the NIH and the U.S. Department of Energy, including the movement of research files and research connected with the modernization of China’s defense capabilities.

2020-07-27
This chapter was originally published on July 27, 2020, continuing the discussion of Rui Sasaki’s article “Xi Jinping’s Hunt for Brains: The Thousand Talents Plan,” published in the monthly magazine Hanada.
The preceding chapter examined U.S. investigations involving Charles Lieber and other researchers, China’s talent-recruitment programs, military-civil fusion, Made in China 2025, and a bipartisan U.S. Senate investigation released in November 2019.
This chapter turns to the specific contractual provisions described in that Senate report, including the transfer of intellectual-property rights to Chinese research institutions, the establishment in China of “shadow laboratories” reproducing work performed in the United States, the removal of research files, and research plans connected with the modernization of China’s defense capabilities.
Text
2020-07-27
People who betray their colleagues for money exist in every country, so that in itself no longer surprises me.
Even so, I can find no word more appropriate than “traitor.”
The following continues from the preceding chapter.
Among these programs, the report identified the Thousand Talents Plan as the most famous.
It stated that the program began in 2008 and had recruited 7,000 researchers by 2017, offering bonuses, various allowances, and research funding.
The problem lay in the terms of the contracts.
According to Senator Portman, the contracts required scientists participating in the Thousand Talents Plan to work for China, keep the contracts secret, recruit postdoctoral researchers, and transfer all intellectual-property rights to the sponsoring Chinese research institutions.
The contracts also reportedly encouraged scientists to establish “shadow laboratories” in China that faithfully replicated the research they were conducting in the United States.
Michael Lauer, deputy director at the NIH, testified at a congressional hearing:
“Thanks to these ‘shadow laboratories,’ China can learn what is happening in the United States before the rest of the world does.
When the NIH informs other U.S. research institutions about the existence of these ‘shadow laboratories’ in order to alert them, they are surprised.
Many institutions did not know that members of their own staff maintained laboratories in China.”
This testimony was reported in the Japanese edition of Nature Asia.
According to an investigation by the Department of Energy, one postdoctoral researcher who had been affiliated with the NIH was selected for the Thousand Talents Plan, obtained a professorship in China, and removed 30,000 electronic files from the research institution before returning to China.
Fortunately, the files were apparently not classified, so the incident did not inflict fatal damage on the NIH.
Nevertheless, the Department of Energy regarded the researcher’s conduct itself as a serious and malicious case.
In June of the previous year, before the congressional report was released, the Department of Energy had itself prohibited its researchers from participating in the Thousand Talents Plan.
The NIH researcher reportedly promoted his research field to a Chinese institution as important for achieving advanced defense capabilities and planned research intended to support the modernization of China’s defense capabilities.
People who betray their colleagues for money exist in every country, so that in itself no longer surprises me.
Even so, I can find no word more appropriate than “traitor.”
To be continued.