A July 27, 2020 essay examining the Thousand Talents Plan and Made in China 2025 against the backdrop of U.S. warnings that China was illicitly acquiring high technology and intellectual property created through massive American investment by means including physical theft, cyber-enabled theft, and forced technology transfer.

2020-07-27
This chapter continues the preceding discussion of China’s talent recruitment policies, particularly the Thousand Talents Plan, and the issue of U.S. research, technology, and intellectual property.
On November 18, 2019, the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released the bipartisan staff report “Threats to the U.S. Research Enterprise: China’s Talent Recruitment Plans,” examining Chinese talent recruitment programs, including the Thousand Talents Plan, and the response of U.S. research institutions and federal agencies.
Earlier, on June 19, 2018, the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy released “How China’s Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World,” identifying, among other practices, physical and cyber-enabled theft of technology and intellectual property and forced technology transfers.
Source Verification Note
The original Japanese text dated July 27, 2020 states that the U.S. Congress had released another report on the Thousand Talents Plan in June 2018.
The relevant June 2018 report was, more precisely, issued by the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy rather than by the U.S. Congress.
For archival purposes, the original Japanese text above has been reproduced without alteration.
English Translation
2020-07-27
China is illicitly acquiring the high-tech industries and intellectual property created through massive U.S. investment by stealing them physically or through cyberattacks and by forcing technology transfers.
The following is a continuation of the preceding chapter.
Some form of legislative action is necessary.
Senator Portman pointed out that the FBI and U.S. research institutions had been extremely slow to respond to China’s Thousand Talents Plan and that efforts to protect American research had to be strengthened.
The report also recommended that researchers participating in the Thousand Talents Plan should be ineligible for U.S. research funding unless they fully disclosed contractual terms and other relevant information, and it stated that some form of legislative action was necessary.
Tobin Smith, Vice President for Policy at the Association of American Universities in Washington, D.C., said that the report vividly conveyed the seriousness of the problem by examining in detail the contractual terms of talent recruitment programs.
He said university faculty members should read the report carefully and be alert to the risks involved in joining the Thousand Talents Plan.
John Brown of the FBI stated that not every scientist participating in the Thousand Talents Plan could be described as a spy in the classical sense, but that participants were in fact being asked by China to provide information and that unlawful conduct was involved.
He argued that countermeasures should have been taken much earlier from a counterintelligence perspective and that the U.S. government and research institutions should act immediately.
Before this, the U.S. Congress had also released a report concerning the Thousand Talents Plan in June 2018.
It was a report by the U.S. government’s Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy titled “How China’s Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World.”
According to the report, China was illicitly acquiring the high-tech industries and intellectual property created through massive U.S. investment by means including physical theft, cyberattacks, and forced technology transfer.
The technological fields affected were wide-ranging and included artificial intelligence, aerospace, virtual reality, high-speed rail, and new-energy vehicles, areas identified in China’s Made in China 2025 strategy.
The phrase “pro-China Shizuoka Governor Kawakatsu obstructing the start of construction of the Linear Shinkansen” appeared in advertising copy for the monthly magazine FACTA.
Base people invariably invoke issues such as the environment, but could he have been assigned the role of obtaining design drawings for the Linear Shinkansen through his confrontational exchanges with JR and providing them to China?
Could he perhaps have fallen into a honey trap during one of his several visits to China?
Such speculation alone seemed to me capable of explaining an attitude that damaged Japan’s national interests without shame and that, I believed, could without exaggeration be described as traitorous.