This article examines the mysterious death of Shoucheng Zhang, once regarded as a leading future Nobel Prize candidate in physics, the fatal shooting of University of Pittsburgh researcher Bing Liu, and China’s Thousand Talents Plan. Drawing on a discussion between Keiko Kawasoe and Sun Shangwen, it explores the unanswered questions surrounding Chinese-linked researchers in the United States and the Chinese authorities’ efforts to conceal information about the program.

June 24, 2020

The alleged suicide by jumping of Professor Zhang, once regarded as a leading future candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics—Professor Zhang was one of the first people selected for the Thousand Talents Plan and also served as its public face

The other night, I watched a special NHK program on the coronavirus, with Professor Yamanaka serving as the principal presenter, and there was one medical scholar from Kyoto University whose remarks particularly caught my attention.
He categorically stated that the Wuhan virus had originated in nature.
Yet, as long as China continues to conceal information completely, it is impossible to determine whether the virus arose naturally or was artificially created.
This is my personal impression, but while all the other participants spoke and conducted themselves in a manner worthy of respect, this professor alone wore an unusually tense expression.
I do not think he appeared very much after making that statement.
Kyoto University must have many international students from China and South Korea.
In other words, channels of communication exist between Kyoto University and China and South Korea.
It would be unreasonable to assume that China, a country in which propaganda is of overwhelming importance, would make no attempt to approach promising scholars at Kyoto University.

The following is taken from a special discussion between Keiko Kawasoe and Sun Shangwen, published under the title “The Top-Secret Wuhan Virus Production Plan Exposed in the United States” in the July issue of the monthly magazine WiLL, essential reading not only for the Japanese people but for people throughout the world.
What was the terrifying plan secretly devised by senior officials of the Chinese Communist Party?

A Chinese Scholar Was Killed

Kawasoe
The war of words between the United States and China over the Wuhan virus is becoming increasingly intense.
Amid this situation, a disturbing piece of news emerged in early May.

Sun
Bing Liu, a 37-year-old assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania, was shot and killed in his home.
Multiple fatal gunshot wounds were reportedly found on his body.

Kawasoe
It appears that Assistant Professor Liu was killed by a Chinese man whom he knew.
Moreover, the initial report stated that the suspect, Hao Gu, was later found dead in a vehicle after the killing and was believed to have taken his own life.

Sun
There may have been a sequence of killings.
Hao Gu may have assassinated Assistant Professor Liu, after which the Chinese government may have hired another killer to eliminate Hao Gu.
That would make it difficult for the American authorities to investigate.
Perhaps Hao Gu’s supposed suicide was staged.

Kawasoe
I also wondered whether this might have been a case in which the killer himself was killed.

Sun
That possibility cannot be entirely dismissed.
According to a research paper by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine published in the international medical journal The Lancet, Assistant Professor Liu was working on the development of a vaccine against the Wuhan virus.
Preliminary animal experiments had reportedly confirmed the synthesis and production of sufficient antibodies, and if the research proceeded smoothly, clinical trials were expected to begin within several months.

Kawasoe
However, the University of Pittsburgh’s official announcement said that there was no confirmed evidence that Assistant Professor Liu had been deeply connected to the Chinese government.
Immediately afterward, information began circulating that the killing had resulted from a complicated love triangle.

Sun
Chinese media criticized Assistant Professor Liu, describing the incident as a murder-suicide arising from an extramarital affair.
It is also said that he had a child with the woman involved.
What is difficult to understand is that the communications between the two were exposed to the public and then reported by the Chinese media.
The coverage has taken on the character of a personal attack against Assistant Professor Liu.

Kawasoe
Attacking the person who was killed—the victim—may be one major difference between Chinese and Japanese society.
Moreover, no one even knows whether the allegations are true or false.
Given the timing, however, I wondered whether Assistant Professor Liu had been a scholar working as an instrument of the Chinese government or military in a Wuhan-virus-related project.
I also wondered whether he had been included in the Thousand Talents Plan.

The “Thousand Talents Plan” Is a “Prison Plan”

Sun
The Thousand Talents Plan is a program designed to recruit highly skilled Chinese specialists in science and engineering who are working in Western countries as scholars, researchers, or technicians.
Its purpose is to have them contribute to the development of China’s science and technology and to its military expansion.

Kawasoe
Put plainly, it amounts to the recruitment of industrial spies.
The FBI had been investigating scientists and engineers selected for the Thousand Talents Plan for approximately five years.
At a hearing of the US House Armed Services Committee held in June 2018, the US Department of Defense also warned that the purpose of the Thousand Talents Plan was to acquire American intellectual property.
For that reason, anti-Communist media gradually began mocking the program by saying, “The Thousand Talents Plan is a prison plan.”
In January of this year, Professor Charles Lieber, chairman of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and a world-renowned authority on semiconductor nanowire electronics, was arrested.
He had been selected for the Foreign Experts Plan, a component of the Thousand Talents Plan aimed at foreign nationals.
As the principal investigator of the Lieber Research Group, he had received more than fifteen million dollars in total research funding from the US National Institutes of Health, the NIH, and the Department of Defense.
When a researcher receives funding from important government institutions, all potential conflicts of interest, including financial support from foreign governments or organizations, must be disclosed.
The stated reason for Professor Lieber’s arrest was that he had failed to make the required disclosures.
Professor Lieber had also received substantial compensation from the Chinese authorities for his work as a scientist at Wuhan University of Technology.
Conducting the same research at universities in both the United States and China while earning income from both sides might sound like a dream arrangement.
But one could also call it a form of “double spying.”

Sun
In an effort to counter the actions of the American authorities, the Chinese authorities made it impossible to find any results when the term “Thousand Talents Plan” was entered into Chinese search engines.
They concealed the information.

Kawasoe
A list of individuals selected for the Thousand Talents Plan had previously been published on a website.
However, on December 1, 2018, Shoucheng Zhang, a tenured professor of physics at Stanford University who had been selected for the Thousand Talents Plan, allegedly died by suicide after jumping from a building.

Sun
Professor Zhang died on the same day that Huawei’s number-two executive, CFO Meng Wanzhou, was arrested.

Kawasoe
Not long afterward, the list of participants disappeared from the Thousand Talents Plan website.
Now, it has reportedly become impossible even to search for the term itself on Baidu.
I had many thoughts about the alleged suicide of Professor Zhang, who had been regarded as a leading future candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics.
What is known is that Professor Zhang was one of the first people selected for the Thousand Talents Plan and that he also served as a prominent public face of the program.
Compared with Professor Zhang, there is insufficient information concerning the relationship between Assistant Professor Bing Liu and the Chinese authorities.
However, Liu obtained his doctorate from the National University of Singapore, continued his research at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania under the distinguished computer scientist Dr. Edmund M. Clarke, and later became an assistant professor at one of the two most highly regarded medical schools in the United States.
The Chinese authorities would surely have regarded him as a valuable scientific talent.
I could not help wondering whether he might somehow have become caught up in a conflict of interests surrounding vaccine development.

To be continued.