Espionage: China’s Military Sends More "Scholars" Abroad, Often Without Schools’ Knowledge

The People’s Liberation Army has sent thousands of "scientists" overseas in recent years, but the "scholars" obscure their affiliation
By Kate O’Keeffe and Melissa Korn

Carnegie Mellon University says it does background checks of foreign scholars and entrusts vetting to the U.S. government.

Scientists from China’s military are significantly expanding research collaboration with scholars from the U.S. and other technologically advanced countries, often obscuring their affiliation from their hosts, according to a new research report and interviews with academics.
The People’s Liberation Army has sponsored more than 2,500 military scientists and engineers to study abroad over the past decade, according to research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. ASPI is a nonpartisan think tank that was created in 2001 by the Australian government, which is engaged in a sharp debate about Chinese Communist Party interference in its domestic affairs.
The volume of peer-reviewed articles produced by PLA scientists working with academics outside China grew nearly eight times during the same period, from 95 in 2007 to 734 last year, the report says.
In some cases, the Chinese "scientists" masked their ties with the PLA, enabling them to work with professors at leading universities like Carnegie Mellon without the schools’ knowledge of their military affiliation, according to Wall Street Journal interviews.
The revelations come as the U.S. and China vie for technological superiority in a variety of fields that have both commercial and military applications, such as quantum physics, cryptography and autonomous-vehicle technology—some of the same topics studied by the PLA researchers who went abroad.
The report raises questions about how well governments and universities have considered exchanges with academics from the Chinese military.

Standard military exchanges between nations frequently involve sending officers to visit each other’s institutions to improve relationships and communication. 

But the report notes "scientists" sent abroad by the PLA often have “minimal or no interaction” with military personnel in their host countries.

Typically, these PLA "scientists" are civilian Communist Party members with sound “political credentials,” who go through intensive training before leaving, the report says.

It quotes the PLA Daily, a military publication, warning that if students sent overseas “develop issues with their politics and ideology, the consequences would be inconceivable.”
Cai Jinting—who also goes by Gill Cai—engaged in linguistic research while at Ohio University during the 2012-13 academic year, working with a professor who studied how a native language affects the way people learn additional languages. 

Linguistics can have applications in artificial intelligence.
Cai didn’t disclose his affiliation with the PLA until after he had arrived, instead citing the civilian institution where he received his undergraduate degree, according to Scott Jarvis, who worked with Cai when he was an associate professor at Ohio University. 

He said Cai was helpful in recruiting Chinese students to participate in research studies and, once on campus, told him of his actual school affiliation.
“At some point I became aware it was a military university,” said Dr. Jarvis, now chairman of the linguistics department at the University of Utah. 

“In my mind it was like a West Point kind of place. Even today I don’t really know what it is.”
An Ohio University spokeswoman said the school doesn’t independently vet scholars “for academic connections nor their background” and relies on the U.S. State Department for that.
Following debate in Congress, the U.S. is taking steps to stop China from acquiring critical technology made by U.S. companies. 

But it could be even more challenging to address such problems at the university level. 

The American academic system prides itself on its openness, and many Chinese scholars bring both expertise and funding.
The PLA, which is the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party, could be one place to draw the line, the Australian report suggests. 

“Helping a rival military develop its expertise and technology isn’t in the national interest,” it says.
At the same time, failing to address the issue risks “tarring all research ties with China with the same brush,” writes author Alex Joske, who found that the U.S.—followed by the U.K., Canada, Australia and Germany—was the top country involved in PLA academic research collaboration.
“National security is our top priority when adjudicating visa applications,” said a State Department spokesman. 

“We are constantly working to find ways to improve our screening processes and to support legitimate travel and immigration to the United States while protecting U.S. citizens and national interests.” 

The State Department added that any applicant who hides material facts relevant to national security risks removal. 

The Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t respond to requests for comment nor did the PLA "scholars" mentioned here.
ASPI found most researchers sent abroad by the PLA obscured it by listing affiliations such as the Zhengzhou Institute of Surveying and Mapping or the Zhengzhou Information Science and Technology Institute (Zisti).
According to the ASPI report, more than 1,600 peer-reviewed papers have been published by people claiming to be from one of those two institutes, both of which refer to the PLA Information Engineering University (PLAIEU). 

But without fluency in Chinese, it would be difficult to decipher the Zhengzhou schools’ military affiliations.

A student and an instructor at the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Information Engineering University in Zhengzhou, China in 2015. 

Qu Dan, an associate professor at PLAIEU, claimed to be from Zisti while a visiting computer science scholar at Carnegie Mellon University’s Language Technologies Institute from 2016-2017, according to her published research papers.
The bio on one of her 2018 papers says her research interests include speech signal processing and machine learning. 

Qu—who is distinct from other CMU scholars of the same name—also published research with Professor Michael T. Johnson while he was                        in Marquette University’s electrical and computer engineering department.
A spokesman for Carnegie Mellon said the university wasn’t aware of Qu’s affiliation with the Chinese military. 

He said the school does background checks and entrusts vetting to the U.S. government, which issued her a visa. 

He added that Qu worked on “openly publishable, fundamental research.”
Dr. Johnson, now chair of the University of Kentucky’s department of electrical and computer engineering, said that, while he knew one of his publications included a co-author from Zisti, he wasn’t familiar with the institution and didn’t know anyone there.
Dr. Johnson didn’t respond to questions seeking additional clarity on four researchers, including Qu, all of whom claimed to be from Zisti and appeared as co-authors on papers with him. 

Marquette didn’t provide comment.
In another case, Qian Haizhong visited Texas State University to work on GPS trajectory data and published a paper in October 2017 with the San Marcos school’s Professor Lu Yongmei. 

The paper lists his affiliation as the Zhengzhou Institute of Surveying and Mapping. 

Lu, now chair of the university’s geography department, said she hadn’t known of Qian’s military connection.
A spokeswoman for the university said Texas State had been unaware of the connection. 

She said the university has a robust vetting process but that ultimately it is up to U.S. officials whether to issue a visa.
“A known direct military relationship would raise the level of scrutiny especially to ensure the research clearly did not have a military-end use,” she said.

Chinese Spies Are Populating LinkedIn

German intelligence unmasks covert Chinese LinkedIn profiles
Reuters

Chinese spies nest

BERLIN -- Germany’s intelligence service has published the details of social network profiles which are fronts faked by Chinese intelligence to gather personal information about German officials and politicians.
The BfV domestic intelligence service took the unusual step of naming individual profiles it says are fake and fake organizations to warn public officials about the risk of leaking valuable personal information via social media.
“Chinese intelligence services are active on LinkedIn and have been trying for a while to extract information and find intelligence sources in this way,” including seeking data on users’ habits, hobbies and political interests.
Nine months of research had found that more than 10,000 German citizens had been contacted on the LinkedIn professional networking site by fake profiles disguised as headhunters, consultants, think-tankers or scholars, the BfV said.
“There could be a large number of target individuals and fake profiles that have not yet been identified,” they added.
Among the faked profiles whose details were published were that of “Rachel Li”, identified as a “headhunter” at “RiseHR”, and an “Alex Li”, a “Project Manager at Center for Sino-Europe Development Studies”.
Many of the profile pictures show stylish and visually appealing young men and women. 

The picture of “Laeticia Chen”, a manager at the “China Center of International Politics and Economy” was nicked from an online fashion catalogue, an official said.
A Reuters review of the profiles showed that some were connected to senior diplomats and politicians from several European countries. 

There was no way to establish whether contacts had taken place beyond the initial social media “add”.
The warning reflects growing concern in European and western intelligence circles at Chinese covert activities in their countries and follows warnings from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency over attempts by the economic giant’s security services to recruit U.S. citizens as agents.
The BfV invited concerned users to contact them if they encountered social media profiles that seemed suspect.

Rogue Nation

Scholars Are Being Punished Amid Growing Squeeze On Public Expression
By ANTHONY KUHN

Staff wait at the Cambridge University Press stand at the Beijing International Book Fair in August. An international outcry ensued when the publisher agreed to block certain articles from one of its journals after pressure from Beijing. The press later reversed its decision.

When students returned to Beijing Normal University for classes last month, there was a notable absence in the classical Chinese class taught by Shi Jiepeng: Shi himself.
University authorities fired the assistant professor in late July, citing a number of offenses, including "expressing views outside the mainstream of society."
The charges still puzzle the lanky teacher, as he sits speaking to me in a café just outside the university's main gate.
"Sure, my views are a bit different from the mainstream and from official views," he concedes. 

"But an open society should be able to tolerate them."

China apparently can't. 

In the past five years, space for public expression has been tightening in media, the arts and civil society. 

Education hasn't been spared: The ruling Communist Party and congress have ordered the country's institutions of higher learning to build themselves into bastions of socialist and Marxist ideology, while purging campuses of liberal thought and subversive foreign ideas.
The drive could have an impact on one of China's stated ambitions, to boost its colleges and universities into the world's finest. 

It seems sure to affect the millions of Chinese students who seek education in the U.S. and other countries, as well as foreign scholars studying China.
Spearheading the drive is the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the party's internal control apparatus, which, besides rooting out corruption, appears to have taken on the additional duty of enforcing political loyalty and ideological conformity in academia.
This year, the CCDI sent inspection teams to around 30 of China's top universities. 

Roughly half were named and criticized for their "weak political work."
When CCDI inspectors arrived at Beijing Normal University in February, conservatives who objected to Shi Jiepeng's ideas reported him to the team.
"The party secretary of my institute told me that the inspectors had criticized me by name," Shi says.

Clashing with the party line
Shi was not fired for his teaching or academic work. 

He says his students never complained about his classes. 

Instead, the inspectors appear to have targeted him because of columns he wrote for a newspaper and his postings on social media.
Oddly, Shi points out, university administrators seem to have overlooked the fact that the CCDI is supposed to enforce Communist Party rules — but since he isn't a party member, it should have no jurisdiction over him. (China has roughly 88 million Communist Party members, or less than 7 percent of the population).
Beijing Normal University didn't respond to NPR requests for comment. 

Nor did China's Ministry of Education.
In his social media postings, Shi criticized Mao Zedong, the leader of China's Communist revolution, as a "demon" for his role in political mass movements including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which cost millions of lives due to political violence and famine.
Shi points out that the party itself admits that Mao made mistakes, so he feels this shouldn't have gotten him fired. 

But if such statements were not grounds for substantial punishment a few years ago, they apparently are now: Another scholar was fired by an architectural university in Shandong Province in January after he criticized Mao.
Shi Jiepeng's criticism of another Chinese ruler — an ancient one — also ticked off many conservatives.
Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty ruled China a few decades before Julius Caesar ruled ancient Rome. 

Wu's wars of conquest against nomadic tribes on China's borders expanded the Chinese empire in all directions, but an estimated one-fifth of the empire's population perished in military adventures, forced labor on huge infrastructure projects and mass executions of anyone suspected of plotting rebellion.
Shi says he criticized Wu "because I believe the welfare of the individual is more important than any ruler's political or military achievements."
Shi has also expressed the opinion that individual welfare is more important than the form or structure of any nation. 

So he sympathizes with Hong Kong and Taiwan residents who do not identify with China and might advocate independence. 

He sees local identity as an important kind of freedom.
All of these ideas clash with the official Chinese line that a unitary state, rather than a collection or federation of smaller states, is the only acceptable form for China. 

Discussion of alternative forms of statehood is forbidden.

An ideological purge

Shi has never been prosecuted for breaking any law. 

But the Communist Party made clear in a 2013 internal document what ideas it considers taboo and does not want taught on college campuses: constitutional democracy, judicial independence, freedom of the press and an independent civil society – in other words, liberalism.
After being fired, Shi turned for advice to a prominent liberal historian named Zhang Ming, who recently retired from the People's University in Beijing.
Zhang says he thought Shi's firing was unprecedented, and believes it was entirely Beijing Normal University's decision.
"No doubt, politics are veering to the left, and there's an ideological purge going on," he says. 

"But I don't think there's a comprehensive official plan for it all."
For decades, university administrators have been able to ignore or deflect government political campaigns, letting offending academics off with a slap on the wrist. 

But now it appears the political pressure is too intense, and administrators "are afraid of losing their official jobs," says Zhang.
Zhang defended Shi on Weibo, the country's main micro-blogging platform. 

His Weibo account was suspended for three months, apparently as punishment.
Zhang says he advised Shi to protest his treatment and not suffer in silence. 

Zhang's own conservative critics repeatedly called for him to be fired, but his university ignored them.
"If they fire me, then they fire me, it's not like I'm going to starve to death," Zhang sniffs. 

Unlike under Mao, unemployed academics these days can always find work elsewhere, he says.
Indeed, the current campaign pales in comparison to the biggest purge of intellectuals under Communist rule. 

The so-called "anti-rightist movement" launched by Mao in 1957 handed many workplaces quotas of rightists (who, in the Chinese context are generally political liberals) to be identified and punished. An estimated half-million people were persecuted.
Mao distrusted intellectuals because of their independent thought. 

During the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, they were denounced and persecuted as a "stinking ninth caste," and students were encouraged to beat and humiliate their teachers. 

From the 1960s through 1990s, college professors were often paid less than manual laborers.

Attempts at censorship
The effect of China's ideological tightening on international scholarship became clear in August, when Chinese censors succeeded briefly in getting the Cambridge University Press to censor articles from an online edition of its influential scholarly journal, the China Quarterly.
The 315 articles were about subjects China's government considers politically sensitive, including Taiwan, Tibet and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
The publisher's explanation of why it at first complied was "to ensure that other academic and educational materials we publish remain available to researchers and educators in this market." 

But the move triggered an intense outcry from international scholars concerned about academic freedoms, and the material was restored.
Cambridge University Press' decision to pull the material "was bad not just because it meant that academics in China were deprived of access to state-of-the art scholarship from another part of the world," says University of California, Irvine historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom. 

Worse, he says, it misled people in China "into imagining that a journal was not publishing what it in fact was. So it violated the integrity of the journal."
Chinese authorities also tried to censor another Cambridge University Press publication that Wasserstrom edits, the Journal of Asian Studies. 

But after the outcry over the China Quarterly, the authorities dropped their request.
The current ideological purge and the attempted censorship is a worrisome step backward, says Wasserstrom, after years in which foreign scholars were "more able to have true collaborations" with their Chinese counterparts.
"There's a tendency to think that since Mao's death in 1976, that with some occasional slips back, there's been at least a two-steps-forward, one-step-back pattern, in a kind of lessening of controls on campuses," he says. 

But for the past seven or eight years, things have been moving in the wrong direction, he says.
Beijing Normal University's Shi Jiepeng consoles himself by taking the long view. 

During China's imperial dynasties, he says, intellectuals were often persecuted for what they wrote. That form of persecution is known as a "literary inquisition."
"Back in those days, people's whole families were executed," he says. 

"Me, I only lost my job. So things are much better now."