American Quislings

Harvard scientist lied about academic, financial ties with Chinese
Charles M. Lieber, the chair of Harvard’s chemistry department, lied about contacts with a Chinese state-run initiative that seeks to draw foreign-educated talent.

By Ellen Barry

Charles M. Lieber at an award ceremony in Jerusalem in 2012.

BOSTON — Early Tuesday morning, F.B.I. agents arrived at two of the most protected corners of Harvard University’s academic cloister, raking through a gabled house in the suburb of Lexington and a neoclassical brick building in Cambridge.
By afternoon, one of Harvard’s scientific luminaries was in handcuffs, charged with making a false statement to federal authorities about his financial relationship with the Chinese government, and especially his participation in its Thousand Talents program, a campaign to attract foreign-educated scientists to China.

The arrest of Charles M. Lieber, the chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, signaled a new, aggressive phase in the Justice Department’s campaign to root out scientists who are stealing research from American laboratories.

For months, news has been trickling out about the prosecution of scientists, mainly Chinese graduate students and researchers working in American laboratories. 

But Lieber represents a different kind of target, a star researcher who had risen to the highest reaches of the American academic hierarchy.

Lieber, a leader in the field of nanoscale electronics, has not been accused of sharing sensitive information with Chinese officials, but rather of hiding — from Harvard, from the National Institutes of Health and from the Defense Department — the amount of money that Chinese funders were paying him.
Lieber’s lawyer, Peter Levitt, made no comment after a preliminary hearing in federal court in Boston on Tuesday.
His arrest sent shock waves through research circles.
“This is a very, very highly esteemed, highly regarded investigator working at Harvard, a major U.S. institution, at the highest rank he could have, so, all the success you can have in this sphere,” said Ross McKinney Jr., chief scientific officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges. 

“It’s like, when you’ve got it all, why do you want more?”
McKinney described anxiety among his colleagues that scientists will be scrutinized over illegitimate sources of international funding.
“We worry that, slowly but surely, we’re going to be criminally charged. This is a big deal. We all could end up in jail.”

Lieber, 60, was charged with one count of making a false or misleading statement, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. 

He appeared in court on Tuesday wearing the outfit he had put on to head to his office at Harvard: a Brooks Brothers polo shirt, cargo pants and hiking boots. 

He appeared subdued as he flipped through the charge sheet. 

Levitt, his lawyer, said it was his first opportunity to read the charge against him.
Harvard said Lieber had been placed on indefinite administrative leave.“The charges brought by the U.S. government against Lieber are extremely serious,” said Jonathan Swain, a spokesman for the university. 

“Harvard is cooperating with federal authorities, including the National Institutes of Health, and is initiating its own review of the misconduct.”
Lieber was one of three scientists to be charged with crimes on Tuesday.

Harvard Chinese criminals

Zaosong Zheng, a Harvard-affiliated cancer researcher was caught leaving the country with 21 vials of cells stolen from a laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, according to the authorities. 

He had admitted that he had planned to turbocharge his career by publishing the research in China under his own name. 

He was charged with smuggling goods from the United States and with making false statements, and was being held without bail in Massachusetts after a judge determined that he was a flight risk. 

His lawyer has not responded to a request for comment.

The third was Yanqing Ye, who had been conducting research at Boston University’s department of physics, chemistry and biomedical engineering until last spring, when she returned to China. 

She hid the fact that she was a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army, and continued to carry out assignments from Chinese military officers while at B.U.
Yanqing was charged with visa fraud, making false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy.

She was in China and was not arrested.
Prosecutors made it clear that the charges announced on Tuesday were part of a bigger crackdown on researchers working with the Chinese government.
“No country poses a greater, more severe or long-term threat to our national security and economic prosperity than China,” said Joseph Bonavolonta, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Boston field office. 

“China’s communists’s goal, simply put, is to replace the U.S. as the world superpower, and they are breaking the law to get there.”
He called Massachusetts, with its cluster of elite universities and research institutions, “a target-rich environment.”

Charging documents in the case describe Lieber’s growing commitments in China, and efforts to hide them from his employers in the United States.
In 2011, the documents say, he signed an agreement to become a “strategic scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology in China, entitling him to a $50,000 monthly salary, $150,000 in annual in living expenses and more than $1.5 million for a second laboratory in Wuhan. 

In 2013, he celebrated the founding of a joint laboratory, the WUT-Harvard Joint Nano Key Laboratory.
He was informed in 2012 that he had been selected to participate in the Thousand Talents plan, the China-run program.
In 2015, Harvard officials discovered that Lieber was leading a laboratory at Wuhan University, and informed him that the use of Harvard’s name and logo was a violation of university policy. 

Lieber then distanced himself from the project, but continued to receive payment.Then in 2017 he was named a university professor, Harvard’s highest faculty rank, one of only 26 professors to hold that status. 

The same year, he earned the N.I.H. Director’s Pioneer Award for inventing syringe-injectable mesh electronics that can integrate with the brain.
Investigators from the Defense Department — which had extended $8 million in grants to Lieber — began questioning him in 2018 about secondary sources of income, prosecutors said.
Lieber told them that he was aware of China’s Thousand Talents program, but had never been invited to participate, prosecution documents say. 

Two days after that conversation, the documents say, Lieber asked a laboratory associate to help him identify web pages in which he was named as the head of the Chinese lab.
“I lost a lot of sleep worrying all of these things last night and want to start taking steps to correct sooner than later,” he wrote in an email to a research colleague that was cited by prosecutors. 

“I will be careful about what I discuss with Harvard University, and none of this will be shared with government investigators at this time.”
Last year, Harvard was required to submit a detailed report about Lieber to N.I.H., which had provided $10 million in grants for his research projects. 

He told university officials that he had “no formal association” with the Wuhan University of Technology, prosecutors said, and that he “is not and has never been” a participant in the Thousand Talents program.The campaign to scrutinize scientists’ foreign funding is a relatively new one.
Late in 2018, Jeff Sessions, then the attorney general, announced that the United States was “standing up to the deliberate, systematic and calculated threats posed, in particular, by the communist regime in China.”
As a result, researchers are adjusting to a higher level of scrutiny about foreign funding than they faced in the past, said Derek Adams, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in civil fraud.
“The problem here, in my view, is that in 2018 there was a material change in the way the F.B.I. and the agencies were approaching this issue,” said Adams, now a partner in the law firm Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell.
In many cases, he said, “they’re looking at conduct that occurred many years ago. For an individual that may have had an obligation to disclose, it may not have been front at center at that time.”
Frank Wu, a law professor and former president of the Committee of 100, an organization of communist Chinese-Americans, has criticized the recent prosecutions as “potentially devastating to American science, because the number of people who have some connection to China is so vast.” Until recently, he said, such collaborations were considered healthy.
“These rules are new rules,” he said.

Greedy American Quislings

China's vise grip on corporate America

by Erica Pandey


The NBA’s swift apology to Chinese fans for a single tweet in support of Hong Kong protestors is part of a troubling trend: The Communist Party in Beijing is setting boundaries for what Americans more than 7,000 miles away are willing to say on sensitive issues.

Why it matters: This isn't a covert operation. 

It's China using its market power to bully American companies and organizations in broad daylight — and muzzle free speech.

The big picture: U.S. companies are increasingly weighing in on social and political issues at home. But when it comes to China — in particular to Hong Kong or to mass detentions of Muslims in East Turkestan — they’re silent.
"When it has to do with market access in China and profits ... they will bend over backwards to apologize," says Bonnie Glaser, an expert on China at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The latest: An image that Houston Rockets' general manager Daryl Morey tweeted — then quickly deleted — that backed Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests kicked off a firestorm in China.
Both Morey and the NBA backtracked after offending Chinese fans. 

But the Chinese government, the Chinese Basketball Association and multiple Chinese businesses have severed ties with the Rockets, reports Axios' Kendall Baker.
Hanging in the balance is an NBA-Tencent streaming deal worth billions, the support of millions of Chinese fans and Morey's job.
This isn't the first time Beijing has squeezed an apology out of — or even changed the behavior of — an American entity.
Marriott apologized to China after Beijing shut down the hotel chain's website because it listed Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet and Macau as separate countries. 

"We don’t support separatist groups that subvert the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China,” the company said in a statement.
All three big U.S. airlines — American, United and Delta — bent to China's will last summer and scrubbed references to Taiwan as its own country.
The Gap — under threat of getting cut out of China — apologized for selling T-shirts with a map of China that didn't include Tibet or Taiwan. 

The company said its map was "incorrect."
Beijing, which is Hollywood's biggest international market, has also pushed American studios to alter content in order to get into Chinese theaters.
What to watch: NBA commissioner Adam Silver released a statement on the situation this morning.
"It is inevitable that people around the world — including from America and China — will have different viewpoints over different issues. It is not the role of the NBA to adjudicate those differences."
"However, the NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues. We simply could not operate that way."

The bottom line: Leveraging foreign access to its 1.5 billion consumers is one of China’s most potent weapons against the U.S.
"It's an authoritarian government, and the Communist Party is in control," Glaser says. 

"They are able to have impact on what their citizens do, and they can mobilize their citizens to hold boycotts if they want do that."

American Quislings

U.S. Company Illegally Sold Chinese-Made Security Products To Military

By PAOLO ZIALCITA

U.S. Attorney Richard P. Donoghue announces charges against Aventura Technologies, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. The New York company has been charged with illegally importing and selling Chinese-made surveillance and security equipment to U.S. government agencies and private customers.

A New York-based security products company and seven of its employees are being charged with fraud, money laundering and illegal importation of equipment manufactured in China.
Several U.S. agencies, including the FBI and the IRS, allege that Aventura Technologies Inc. falsely claimed that its products were made in the U.S. and also misrepresented itself as a woman-owned small business in order to gain access to federal contracts set aside for those businesses.
"Aventura imports its products from other manufacturers, primarily manufacturers located in China, at times with false 'Made in the U.S.A.' labels already affixed to the products or displayed on their packaging," a Justice Department court filing said.
Officials say Aventura's actions endangered military personnel on U.S. Navy ships and military bases by selling them Chinese products with known cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
"Greed is at the heart of this scheme, a reprehensible motive when the subjects in this case allegedly put into question the security of men and women who don uniforms each day to protect our nation," said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney.

"There is no mistaking the cyber vulnerabilities created when this company sold electronic surveillance products made in the People's Republic of China, and then using those items in our government agencies and the branches of our armed forces."
According to court documents, Aventura has held multiple contracts with the federal government, selling about $20.7 million of security equipment to the various military factions between 2006 to 2018. 

These contracts prohibited Aventura from providing goods from a wide array of countries, one of which is China.
Among the seven employees arrested is Jack Cabasso, Aventura's managing director, and his wife, Frances Cabasso, the purported CEO.
The couple is being accused of lying in order to extend and obtain government contracts reserved for women-owned businesses. 

The DOJ says Frances has little or no role at the company, making its claim as a woman-owned small business false.
The Cabassos are also being accused of siphoning millions of company dollars through shell companies and intermediaries. 

In addition, Aventura paid $1 million to fund the Cabasso's 70-foot luxury yacht.
Federal agents confiscated the yacht at the gated community where the couple live. 

Agents also seized $3 million dollars from several bank accounts.
The government intercepted shipments carrying Chinese manufactured goods several times, which agents later linked to Aventura's operations, according to the Justice Department.
Founded in 1999, Aventura self-describes itself as an "innovative designer, developer and manufacturer" of security products. 

The DOJ says the company has been misleading customers since 2006.

American Quislings

U.S. Tech Companies Sidestep a Trump Ban, to Keep Selling to Huawei

By Paul Mozur and Cecilia Kang

A Huawei billboard in Shanghai. The deals with United States companies will help Huawei continue to sell its smartphones and other products.

SHANGHAI — United States chip makers are still selling millions of dollars of products to Huawei despite a Trump administration ban on the sale of American technology to the Chinese telecommunications giant.
Industry leaders including Intel and Micron have found ways to avoid labeling goods as American-made, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be named because they were not authorized to disclose the sales.
Goods produced by American companies overseas are not always considered American-made. 

The components began to flow to Huawei about three weeks ago, the people said.
The sales will help Huawei continue to sell products such as smartphones and servers, and underscore how difficult it is for the Trump administration to clamp down on companies that it considers a national security threat, like Huawei. 

They also hint at the possible unintended consequences from altering the web of trade relationships that ties together the world’s electronics industry and global commerce.
The Commerce Department’s move to block sales to Huawei, by putting it on a so-called entity list, set off confusion within the Chinese company and its many American suppliers, the people said. Many executives lacked deep experience with American trade controls, leading to initial suspensions in shipments to Huawei until lawyers could puzzle out which products could be sent. 

Decisions about what can and cannot be shipped were also often run by the Commerce Department.

American companies like Intel sell technology supporting current Huawei products until mid-August.

American companies may sell technology supporting current Huawei products until mid-August. 

But a ban on components for future Huawei products is already in place. 

It’s not clear what percentage of the current sales were for future products. 

The sales have most likely already totaled hundreds of millions of dollars, the people estimated.
While the Trump administration has been aware of the sales, officials are split about how to respond, the people said. 

Some officials feel that the sales violate the spirit of the law and undermine government efforts to pressure Huawei, while others are more supportive because it lightens the blow of the ban for American corporations. 

Huawei has said it buys around $11 billion in technology from United States companies each year.
Intel and Micron declined to comment.
“As we have discussed with the U.S. government, it is now clear some items may be supplied to Huawei consistent with the entity list and applicable regulations,” John Neuffer, the president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, wrote in a statement on Friday.
“Each company is impacted differently based on their specific products and supply chains, and each company must evaluate how best to conduct its business and remain in compliance.”
In an earnings call Tuesday afternoon, Micron’s chief executive, Sanjay Mehrotra, said the company stopped shipments to Huawei after the Commerce Department’s action last month. 

But it resumed sales about two weeks ago after Micron reviewed the entity list rules and “determined that we could lawfully resume” shipping a subset of products, Mr. Mehrotra said. 

“However, there is considerable ongoing uncertainty around the Huawei situation,” he added.
A spokesman for the Commerce Department, in response to questions about the sales to Huawei, referred to a section of the official notice about the company being added to the entity list, including that the purpose was to “prevent activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”

The Idaho-based Micron competes with South Korean companies like Samsung to supply memory chips that go into Huawei’s smartphones.

A senior administration official said that after the Commerce Department put Huawei on the entity list, the Semiconductor Industry Association sent a letter to the White House asking for waivers for some companies to allow them to continue selling components to Huawei. 

But the administration did not grant the waivers, he said, and the companies then found what they assert is a legal basis for continuing their sales.
Administration officials would like to address this issue, he said, but they do not plan to do so before the G-20 summit in Japan at the end of this week. 

Mr. Trump’s top priority is to discuss the general trade dispute with Xi Jinping and get the two sides to resume trade talks that have dragged on since early 2018, the official said.
The fate of Huawei, a crown jewel of Chinese innovation and technological prowess, has become a symbol of the economic and security standoff between the United States and China. 

Chinese companies like Huawei, which makes telecom networking equipment, could intercept and secretly divert information to China. 

Xi Jinping and President Trump are expected to have an “extended” talk this week during the Group of 20 meetings in Japan, a sign that the two countries are again seeking a compromise after trade discussions broke down in May. 

After the talks stalled, the Trump administration announced new restrictions on Chinese technology companies.

Along with Huawei, the administration blocked a Chinese supercomputer maker from buying American tech, and it is considering adding the surveillance technology company Hikvision to the list.
Kevin Wolf, a former Commerce Department official and partner at the law firm Akin Gump, has advised several American technology companies that supply Huawei. 

He said he told executives that Huawei’s addition to the list did not prevent American suppliers from continuing sales, as long as the goods and services weren’t made in the United States.

The SK Hynix plant in Icheon, South Korea. American companies are worried about losing market share to foreign rivals.

A chip, for example, can still be supplied to Huawei if it is manufactured outside the United States and doesn’t contain technology that can pose national security risks. 

But there are limits on sales from American companies. 

If the chip maker provides services from the United States for troubleshooting or instruction on how to use the product, for example, the company would not be able to sell to Huawei even if the physical chip were made overseas, Wolf said.
“This is not a loophole or an interpretation because there is no ambiguity,” he said. 

“It’s just esoteric.”
After this article was published online on Tuesday, Garrett Marquis, the White House National Security Council spokesman, criticized the companies’ workarounds. 

He said, “If true, it’s disturbing that a former Senate-confirmed Commerce Department official, who was previously responsible for enforcement of U.S. export control laws including through entity list restrictions, may be assisting listed entities to circumvent those very enforcement mechanisms.”
Wolf said he does not represent Chinese companies or firms on the entity list, and he added that Commerce Department officials had provided him with identical information on the scope of the list in recent weeks.
In some cases, American companies aren’t the only source of important technology, but they want to avoid losing Huawei’s valuable business to a foreign rival. 

For instance, the Idaho-based Micron competes with South Korean companies like Samsung and SK Hynix to supply memory chips that go into Huawei’s smartphones. 

If Micron is unable to sell to Huawei, orders could easily be shifted to those rivals.
Beijing has also pressured American companies. 

This month, the Chinese government said it would create an “unreliable entities list” to punish companies and individuals it perceived as damaging Chinese interests. 

The following week, China’s chief economic planning agency summoned foreign executives, including representatives from Microsoft, Dell and Apple. 

It warned them that cutting off sales to Chinese companies could lead to punishment and hinted that the companies should lobby the United States government to stop the bans. 

The stakes are high for some of the American companies, like Apple, which relies on China for many sales and for much of its production.

A FedEx warehouse in Kernersville, N.C. “FedEx is a transportation company, not a law enforcement agency,” the company said in a complaint against the government.

Wolf said several companies had scrambled to figure out how to continue sales to Huawei, with some businesses considering a total shift of manufacturing and services of some products overseas. 

The escalating trade battle between the United States and China is “causing companies to fundamentally rethink their supply chains,” he added.
That could mean that American companies shift their know-how, on top of production, outside the United States, where it would be less easy for the government to control, said Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“American companies can move some things out of China if that’s problematic for their supply chain, but they can also move the tech development out of the U.S. if that becomes problematic,” he said. 

“And China remains a large market.”
“Some of the big winners might be other countries,” Mr. Chorzempa said.
Some American companies have complained that complying with the tight restrictions is difficult or impossible, and will take a toll on their business.
On Monday, FedEx filed a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming that the Commerce Department’s rules placed an “impossible burden” on a company like FedEx to know the origin and technological makeup of all the shipments it handles.
FedEx’s complaint didn’t name Huawei specifically. 

But it said that the agency’s rules that have prohibited exporting American technology to Chinese companies placed “an unreasonable burden on FedEx to police the millions of shipments that transit our network every day.”
“FedEx is a transportation company, not a law enforcement agency,” the company said.
A Commerce Department spokesman said it had not yet reviewed FedEx’s complaint but would defend the agency’s role in protecting national security.

American Quislings: Wall Street and corporate America are funding China’s fight with the US

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and hedge fund manager Kyle Bass accused Wall Street of funding China’s war with the U.S.

By YENNEE LEE

CNBC’s exclusive interview with Steve Bannon and Kyle Bass

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and hedge fund manager Kyle Bass have accused Wall Street and corporate America of funding China’s fight with the U.S.
Bannon and Bass are members of the Committee on the Present Danger: China.

It was launched to educate and inform American citizens and policymakers about the existential threats posed by China, according to the committee’s website.
“The entire operation of the Chinese Communist Party and what they’re running in China is being funded by Wall Street,” Bannon told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan on Thursday.
“Corporate America today is the lobbying arm of the Chinese Communist Party and Wall Street is the investor relations department,” he said, calling China “the most significant existential threat that we have ever faced.”

Hedge fund manager Kyle Bass.

Mr Bass — a known China bear, who is also the founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management — claimed that large American companies are the ones pushing U.S. President Donald Trump to conclude a trade deal with China.

“If you look behind the scenes, it is corporate America pushing Trump to do a deal. And it is the corporate American chieftains that have their biggest businesses, let’s say most growth, coming out of China. And China plays that card. They play it better than anybody else,” Mr Bass told CNBC’s Sullivan.

“They open a market to very specific people to basically court influence with that person and going... into the presidential office to actually change policy,” said Bass.

No hope of coexistence with China
The Committee on the Present Danger was first established in the 1950s to warn President Harry Truman’s administration of the influence of communism in the U.S. 

The committee’s latest focus on China is its fourth iteration.
In addition to Mr Bannon and Mr Bass, other members of the group include fervent supporters of President Trump, fellows from think tanks, and former defense and intelligence officials.

Huawei is a spy agency for the Chinese Communist Party

Under President Trump, Washington has taken a tougher stance on China compared to previous administrations. 

In addition to issues surrounding trade, American intelligence chiefs expressed their distrust of Chinese tech giant Huawei and Chinese telecom company ZTE.
But the committee appeared to advocate a stronger take on rogue China compared to the Trump administration. 

In its guiding principles posted on its website, the committee said: “There is no hope of coexistence with China as long as the Communist Party governs the country.”
When asked if he would tell U.S. companies to stop doing business in China, Bannon replied: “No. What you do is you back President Trump.”
“We have a whole of government approach to really confront China on this economic war. This has never happened,” he added.

China Uses DNA to Track Its People, With the Help of American Quislings

The Chinese turned to a Massachusetts company and a prominent Yale researcher as they built an enormous system of surveillance and control.
By Sui-Lee Wee

Tahir Imin, a 38-year-old Uighur, had his blood drawn, his face scanned and his voice recorded by the authorities in China’s East Turkestan colony.

BEIJING — The authorities called it a free health check. Tahir Imin had his doubts.
They drew blood from the 38-year-old Muslim, scanned his face, recorded his voice and took his fingerprints. 

They didn’t bother to check his heart or kidneys, and they rebuffed his request to see the results.
“They said, ‘You don’t have the right to ask about this,’” Mr. Imin said. 

“‘If you want to ask more,’ they said, ‘you can go to the police.’”
Mr. Imin was one of millions of people caught up in a vast Chinese campaign of surveillance and oppression. 

To give it teeth, the Chinese authorities are collecting DNA — and they got unlikely corporate and academic help from the United States to do it.
China wants to make the country’s Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, more subservient to the Communist Party. 

It has detained up to a million people in concentration camps, drawing condemnation and threat of sanctions from the Trump administration.
Collecting genetic material is a key part of China’s campaign.

A comprehensive DNA database could be used to chase down any Uighurs who resist conforming to the campaign.
Police forces in the United States and elsewhere use genetic material from family members to find suspects and solve crimes. 

Chinese officials, who are building a broad nationwide database of DNA samples, have cited the crime-fighting benefits of China’s own genetic studies.
To bolster their DNA capabilities, scientists affiliated with China’s police used equipment made by Thermo Fisher, a Massachusetts company. 

For comparison with Uighur DNA, they also relied on genetic material from people around the world that was provided by Kenneth Kidd, a Yale University geneticist.

Kenneth Kidd is helping China's Final Solution

On Wednesday, Thermo Fisher said it would no longer sell its equipment in East Turkestan, the colony of China where the campaign to track Uighurs is mostly taking place. 

The company said separately in an earlier statement to The New York Times that it was working with American officials to figure out how its technology was being used.
Kidd said he had been unaware of how his material and know-how were being used. 

He naively "believed" Chinese scientists were acting within scientific norms that require informed consent by DNA donors.
China’s campaign poses a direct challenge to the scientific community and the way it makes cutting-edge knowledge publicly available. 

The Chinese campaign relies on public DNA databases and commercial technology, much of it made or managed in the United States. 

In turn, Chinese scientists have contributed Uighur DNA samples to a global database, violating scientific norms of consent.
Cooperation from the global scientific community “legitimizes this type of Orwellian genetic surveillance,” said Mark Munsterhjelm, an assistant professor at the University of Windsor in Ontario who has closely tracked the use of American technology in East Turkestan.

China has maintained an iron grip in East Turkestan, where it is trying to make Uighur Muslims more subservient to the Communist Party.

Swabbing Millions
In East Turkestan, in northwestern China, the program was known as “Physicals for All.”
From 2016 to 2017, nearly 36 million people took part in it, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency. 

The Chinese collected DNA samples, images of irises and other personal data.

It is unclear whether some residents participated more than once — East Turkestan has a population of about 24.5 million.
In a statement, the East Turkestan government denied that it collects DNA samples as part of the free medical checkups. 

It said the DNA machines that were bought by the East Turkestan authorities were for “internal use.”
China has for decades maintained an iron grip in East Turkestan. 

In recent years, it has blamed Uighurs for a series of "terrorist" attacks in East Turkestan and elsewhere in China, including a 2013 incident in which a driver struck two people in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
In late 2016, the Communist Party embarked on a campaign to turn the Uighurs and other largely Muslim minority groups into loyal supporters. 

The government locked up hundreds of thousands of them in what it called "job training" camps, touted as a way to escape poverty, backwardness and radical Islam. 

It also began to take DNA samples.
In at least some of the cases, people didn’t give up their genetic material voluntarily. 

To mobilize Uighurs for the free medical checkups, police and local cadres called or sent them text messages, telling them the checkups were required, according to Uighurs interviewed by The Times.
“There was a pretty strong coercive element to it,” said Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Washington who studies the plight of the Uighurs. 

“They had no choice.”

A market in Kashgar, a city in East Turkestan. China has detained up to a million people in camps in the western region.

Calling Kidd
Kenneth Kidd first visited China in 1981 and remained curious about the country. 

So when he received an invitation in 2010 for an expenses-paid trip to visit Beijing, he said yes.
Kidd is a major figure in the genetics field. 

The 77-year-old Yale professor has helped to make DNA evidence more acceptable in American courts.
His Chinese hosts had their own background in law enforcement. 

They were scientists from the Ministry of Public Security — essentially, China’s police.
During that trip, Kidd met Li Caixia, the chief forensic physician of the ministry’s Institute of Forensic Science. 

The relationship deepened. 

In December 2014, Li arrived at Kidd’s lab for an 11-month stint. 

She took some DNA samples back to China.
“I had thought we were sharing samples for collaborative research,” said Kidd.
Kidd is not the only foreign geneticist to have worked with the Chinese authorities. 

Bruce Budowle, a professor at the University of North Texas, says in his online biography that he “has served or is serving” as a member of an academic committee at the ministry’s Institute of Forensic Science.
Jeff Carlton, a university spokesman, said in a statement that Budowle’s role with the ministry was “only symbolic in nature” and that he had “done no work on its behalf.”
“Budowle and his team abhor the use of DNA technology to persecute ethnic or religious groups,” Mr. Carlton said in the statement. 

“Their work focuses on criminal investigations and combating human trafficking to serve humanity.”
Kidd’s data became part of China’s DNA drive.
In 2014, Chinese ministry researchers published a paper describing a way for scientists to tell one ethnic group from another. 

It cited, as an example, the ability to distinguish Uighurs from Indians. 

The authors said they used 40 DNA samples taken from Uighurs in China and samples from other ethnic groups from Kidd’s Yale lab.
In patent applications filed in China in 2013 and 2017, ministry researchers described ways to sort people by ethnicity by screening their genetic makeup. 

They took genetic material from Uighurs and compared it with DNA from other ethnic groups. 

In the 2017 filing, researchers explained that their system would help in “inferring the geographical origin from the DNA of suspects at crime scenes.”
For outside comparisons, they used DNA samples provided by Kidd’s lab, the 2017 filing said. 

They also used samples from the 1000 Genomes Project, a public catalog of genes from around the world.
Paul Flicek, member of the steering committee of the 1000 Genomes Project, said that its data was unrestricted and that “there is no obvious problem” if it was being used as a way to determine where a DNA sample came from.
The data flow also went the other way.
Chinese government researchers contributed the data of 2,143 Uighurs to the Allele Frequency Database, an online search platform run by Kidd that was partly funded by the United States Department of Justice until last year. 

The database, known as Alfred, contains DNA data from more than 700 populations around the world.
This sharing of data could violate scientific norms of informed consent because it is not clear whether the Uighurs volunteered their DNA samples to the Chinese authorities, said Arthur Caplan, the founding head of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s School of Medicine. 

He said that “no one should be in a database without express consent.”
“Honestly, there’s been a kind of naïveté on the part of American scientists presuming that other people will follow the same rules and standards wherever they come from,” Dr. Caplan said.
Kidd said he was “not particularly happy” that the Chinese ministry had cited him in its patents, saying his data shouldn’t be used in ways that could allow people or institutions to potentially profit from it. 

If the Chinese authorities used data they got from their earlier collaborations with him, he added, there is little he can do to stop them.
He said he was unaware of the filings until he was contacted by The Times.
Kidd also said he considered his collaboration with the ministry to be no different from his work with police and forensics labs elsewhere. 

He said governments should have access to data about minorities, not just the dominant ethnic group, in order to have an accurate picture of the whole population.
As for the consent issue, he said the burden of meeting that standard lay with the Chinese researchers, though he said reports about what Uighurs are subjected to in China raised some difficult questions.
“I would assume they had appropriate informed consent on the samples,” he said, “though I must say what I’ve been hearing in the news recently about the treatment of the Uighurs raises concerns.”

Machine Learning
In 2015, Kidd and Budowle spoke at a genomics conference in the Chinese city of Xi’an. 

It was underwritten in part by Thermo Fisher, a company that has come under intense criticism for its equipment sales in China, and Illumina, a San Diego company that makes gene sequencing instruments. 

Illumina did not respond to requests for comment.
China is ramping up spending on health care and research. 

The Chinese market for gene-sequencing equipment and other technologies was worth $1 billion in 2017 and could more than double in five years, according to CCID Consulting, a research firm. 

But the Chinese market is loosely regulated, and it isn’t always clear where the equipment goes or to what uses it is put.
Thermo Fisher sells everything from lab instruments to forensic DNA testing kits to DNA mapping machines, which help scientists decipher a person’s ethnicity and identify diseases to which he or she is particularly vulnerable. 

China accounted for 10 percent of Thermo Fisher’s $20.9 billion in revenue, according to the company’s 2017 annual report, and it employs nearly 5,000 people there.
“Our greatest success story in emerging markets continues to be China,” it said in the report.
China used Thermo Fisher’s equipment to map the genes of its people, according to five Ministry of Public Security patent filings.
The company has also sold equipment directly to the authorities in East Turkestan, where the campaign to control the Uighurs has been most intense. 

At least some of the equipment was intended for use by the police, according to procurement documents. 

The authorities there said in the documents that the machines were important for DNA inspections in criminal cases and had “no substitutes in China.”
In February 2013, six ministry researchers credited Thermo Fisher’s Applied Biosystems brand, as well as other companies, with helping to analyze the DNA samples of Han, Uighur and Tibetan people in China, according to a patent filing. 

The researchers said understanding how to differentiate between such DNA samples was necessary for fighting "terrorism" “because these cases were becoming more difficult to crack.”
The researchers said they had obtained 95 Uighur DNA samples, some of which were given to them by the police. 

Other samples were provided by Uighurs voluntarily, they said.
Thermo Fisher was criticized by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, and others who asked the Commerce Department to prohibit American companies from selling technology to China that could be used for purposes of surveillance and tracking.


Marco Rubio
✔@marcorubio
Grotesque to read @thermofisher fawning over #XiJinping in #China’s state media.
A reminder #ThermoFisher is making lots of $ helping #Xinjiang authorities conduct mass detention & brutal suppression of #Uyghur Muslims by selling them DNA sequencers.http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201811/05/WS5bdfe891a310eff3032869d9_12.html …
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On Wednesday, Thermo Fisher said it would stop selling its equipment in East Turkestan, a decision it said was “consistent with Thermo Fisher’s values, ethics code and policies.”
“As the world leader in serving science, we recognize the importance of considering how our products and services are used — or may be used — by our customers,” it said.

Tahir Hamut, a Uighur now living in Virginia whose blood was taken by the police in East Turkestan, said it was “inconceivable” that Uighurs there would have consented to give DNA samples.

Human rights groups praised Thermo Fisher’s move. 

Still, they said, equipment and information flows into China should be better monitored, to make sure the authorities elsewhere don’t send them to East Turkestan.
“It’s an important step, and one hopes that they apply the language in their own statement to commercial activity across China, and that other companies are assessing their sales and operations, especially in East Turkestan,” said Sophie Richardson, the China director of Human Rights Watch.
American lawmakers and officials are taking a hard look at the situation in East Turkestan. 

The Trump administration is considering sanctions against Chinese officials and companies over China’s treatment of the Uighurs.
China’s tracking campaign unnerved people like Tahir Hamut. 

In May 2017, the police in the city of Urumqi in East Turkestan drew the 49-year-old Uighur’s blood, took his fingerprints, recorded his voice and took a scan of his face. 

He was called back a month later for what he was told was a free health check at a local clinic.
Mr. Hamut, a filmmaker who is now living in Virginia, said he saw between 20 to 40 Uighurs in line. He said it was absurd to think that such frightened people had consented to submit their DNA.
“No one in this situation, not under this much pressure and facing such personal danger, would agree to give their blood samples for research,” Mr. Hamut said. 

“It’s just inconceivable.”

Meet the 10 American Quislings

There's a slew of one-time U.S. politicians and officials who have lobbied for China or whose business interests are closely connected to it.
BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN

As China’s wealth has grown, so has its sophistication at currying favor in Washington and among the American elite.
Both the Chinese government and Chinese companies, often with close state ties, have retained lobbying and public-relations firms in the Beltway, in some cases hiring former U.S. officials as personal lobbyists.
Beijing has also learned how to harness its economic might by alternately opening its doors to companies who play by China’s rules, and slamming the door on companies that go against its red lines.
In some cases, this grants Beijing powerful sway over foreign companies with business interests in China.
This has raised concerns that current U.S. government officials may have an eye on their future prospects in China even before leaving office.
While it may seem politics as usual in Washington today, some are alarmed.
“Nobody in the 1980s would have represented the Russian government. And now you find so many lobbying for the Chinese government,” said Frank Wolf, a retired U.S. representative from Virginia who long served as the co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.
“I served in Congress for 34 years. I find it shocking.”
Below are some of the more prominent former U.S. politicians and officials whose have lobbied for China or whose business interests are closely connected to it.

1. Charles Boustany
Boustany served as the U.S. representative for Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District until 2017 and co-chaired the U.S.-China working group.
After leaving Congress, he joined the lobbying firm Capitol Counsel.
Boustany has registered as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, representing the U.S.-China Transpacific Foundation, which is based in Las Vegas and is sponsored by the Chinese government.
According to FARA filings, Capitol Counsel helps the foundation bring delegations of U.S. members of Congress to China to “enhance their understanding on the cultural, economic, political, and social developments of the People’s Republic of China, thus helping strengthen U.S.-China relations.”
The foundation provided Capitol Counsel with an initial fee of $50,000 in late 2017, when the contract began.

2. John Boehner
The former House speaker joined Squire Patton Boggs after he retired from the House in 2015.
The lobbying firm has long represented the Chinese embassy in Washington; Boehner serves “as a strategic adviser to clients in the U.S. and abroad, and will focus on global business development.” Boehner helped lead the effort to grant China most favored trading nation status in the late 1990s.

3. Jon Christenson
Christenson served as a U.S. representative from Nebraska from 1995 to 1999.
Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corp hired him as a lobbyist after he left Congress.
After the FBI investigation into ZTE’s violation of sanctions on Iran became public, Christenson resigned from his position there.

4. David Firestein
Firestein served as a career diplomat from 1992 to 2010.
After leaving government, he joined the East-West Institute, where he spearheaded a series of dialogues between high-ranking political party leaders in the United States and China.
In many of its dialogues, which bring U.S. leaders to China, the East-West Institute has partnered with the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation, which is closely connected to the United Front, a political-influence arm of the Chinese Communist Party; the institute has also partnered with a Chinese organization known to be a front for the People’s Liberation Army’s political-intelligence agency.
Firestein now serves as the director of the University of Texas at Austin’s China Public Policy Center. Firestein proposed forming a partnership between the China Public Policy Center and the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation.
But under pressure from U.S. lawmakers concerned about Chinese influence, UT Austin decided to turn down the proposal this year.

5. Mike Holtzman
Holtzman worked in the executive office of the president as special adviser for public affairs to the U.S. trade ambassador under Bill Clinton, and later served as an adviser to the director of policy planning staff at the State Department under Colin Powell.
Holtzman is now a partner at public-relations firm BLF Worldwide, where he managed the campaign for China’s bid to host the 2008 Olympics.
Holtzman is registered as a foreign agent and represents the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation.
According to FARA filings, in this role he will “provide services for the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation to promote its interests in the U.S., including expanding third-party supporters, generating media placements, arranging visits for delegations to China, and supporting CUSEF activity with the U.S.”

6. Randall Phillips
Phillips spent 28 years in the CIA, finishing his tenure as station chief in Beijing.
But after he left the agency, Phillips took the unusual step of remaining in Beijing and joining the private-investigations firm Mintz Group.
Multiple sources told The Daily Beast that Phillips’ decision to peddle his services in Beijing has raised eyebrows within the agency.

7. Donald (Andy) Purdy Jr.
As a White House staff member in the George W. Bush administration, Purdy helped draft a cybersecurity strategy in 2003 known as the U.S. National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace before moving to the Department of Homeland Security, where he helped craft cybersecurity initiatives and served as the lead cyber- official at DHS and the U.S. government; he later became the chief security officer for Huawei’s U.S. operations.

8. Clark T. Randt Jr.
Randt served as U.S. ambassador to China from 2001 to 2009.
Since 2009, he has served as president of Randt and Co. LLC, which advises companies doing business in China.
He is a special adviser of HOPU Jinghua (Beijing) Investment Consultancy Co., and sits on the advisory boards of numerous organizations with business interests closely tied to China, including Qualcomm, Wynn Resorts, and Valmont Industries.

9. Matt Salmon
Salmon served as U.S. representative for Arizona’s 5th Congressional District and chaired the Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee on the House Foreign Relations Committee.
He retired from politics in 2016.
He now serves as the vice president for government affairs at Arizona State University, where his position includes “working with the governments of other countries to advance international projects.”
Arizona State is home to a Confucius Institute, a Beijing-funded "educational" enterprise that Salmon has said brings around $200,000 a year to the university.
At an April event in Washington, co-hosted by the Confucius Institute as it faced congressional scrutiny over threats to academic freedom on U.S. campuses, Salmon dismissed rising concerns about China as “McCarthyism” and said that the United States should work “with the only other superpower and not against it.”

10. James D. Wolfensohn
A former president of the World Bank Group, Wolfensohn has served as a member of the international advisory committee of the China Investment Corporation, China’s sovereign wealth fund.

How China gained favorable policy actions from the Obama administration

Inside the shady private equity firm run by Kerry and Biden’s kids

By Peter Schweizer

John Kerry (left) and Joe Biden.

‘Secret Empires’ by Peter Schweizer

“My frustration,” writes Peter Schweizer in his new book, “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,” “is not that the solid reporting on Trump has been too tough, but that the reporting on the Obama administration has been way too soft or in some cases nonexistent.” 

The author of the 2016 sensation “Clinton Cash” says Trump and his children didn’t invent the blurring of government and business, and details a number of ethical violations on both sides of the political aisle. 

One example: the little-noticed private equity firm run by the sons of Democrats Joe Biden and John Kerry, as detailed in this exclusive first excerpt.
Joe Biden and John Kerry have been pillars of the Washington establishment for more than 30 years. Biden is one of the most popular politicians in our nation’s capital.
His demeanor, sense of humor, and even his friendly gaffes have allowed him to form close relationships with both Democrats and Republicans. 

His public image is built around his “Lunch Bucket Joe” persona. 

As he reminds the American people on regular occasions, he has little wealth to show for his career, despite having reached the vice presidency.
One of his closest political allies in Washington is former senator and former Secretary of State John Kerry. 

“Lunch Bucket Joe” he ain’t; Kerry is more patrician than earthy. 

But the two men became close while serving for several decades together in the US Senate. 

The two “often talked on matters of foreign policy,” says Jules Witcover in his Biden biography.
So their sons going into business together in June 2009 was not exactly a bolt out of the blue.
But with whom their sons cut lucrative deals while the elder two were steering the ship of state is more of a surprise.
What Hunter Biden, the son of America’s vice president, and Christopher Heinz, the stepson of the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (later to be secretary of state) John Kerry, were creating was an international private equity firm. 

It was anchored by the Heinz family alternative investment fund, Rosemont Capital. 

The new firm would be populated by political loyalists and positioned to strike profitable deals overseas with foreign governments and officials with whom the US government was negotiating.
Hunter Biden, Vice President Joe Biden’s youngest son, had gone through a series of jobs since graduating from Yale Law School in 1996, including the hedge-fund business.
By the summer of 2009, the 39-year-old Hunter joined forces with the son of another powerful figure in American politics, Chris Heinz. 

Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania had tragically died in a 1991 airplane crash when Chris was 18. Chris, his brothers, and his mother inherited a large chunk of the family’s vast ketchup fortune, including a network of investment funds and a Pennsylvania estate, among other properties. 

In May 1995, his mother, Teresa, married Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. 

That same year, Chris graduated from Yale, and then went on to get his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Hunter Biden (left) with father Joe Biden following the inauguration ceremony of President Barack Obama, Jan. 20, 2009.

Joining them in the Rosemont venture was Devon Archer, a longtime Heinz and Kerry friend.
The three friends established a series of related LLCs. 

The trunk of the tree was Rosemont Capital, the alternative investment fund of the Heinz Family Office. 

Rosemont Farm is the name of the Heinz family’s 90-acre estate outside Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania.
The small fund grew quickly. 

According to an email revealed as part of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, Rosemont described themselves as “a $2.4 billion private equity firm co-owned by Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz,” with Devon Archer as “Managing Partner.”
The partners attached several branches to the Rosemont Capital trunk, including Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC, Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners, and Rosemont Realty.
Of the various deals in which these Rosemont entities were involved, one of the largest and most troubling concerns was Rosemont Seneca Partners.
Rather than set up shop in New York City, the financial capital of the world, Rosemont Seneca leased space in Washington, DC. 

They occupied an all-brick building on Wisconsin Avenue, the main thoroughfare of exclusive Georgetown. 

Their offices would be less than a mile from John and Teresa Kerry’s 23-room Georgetown mansion, and just two miles from both Joe Biden’s office in the White House and his residence at the Naval Observatory.
Over the next seven years, as both Joe Biden and John Kerry negotiated sensitive and high-stakes deals with foreign governments, Rosemont entities secured a series of exclusive deals often with those same foreign governments.
Some of the deals they secured may remain hidden. 

These Rosemont entities are, after all, within a private equity firm and as such are not required to report or disclose their financial dealings publicly.
Some of their transactions are nevertheless traceable by investigating world capital markets. 

A troubling pattern emerges from this research, showing how profitable deals were struck with foreign governments on the heels of crucial diplomatic missions carried out by their powerful fathers. Often those foreign entities gained favorable policy actions from the United States government just as the sons were securing favorable financial deals from those same entities.
Nowhere is that more true than in their commercial dealings with Chinese government-backed enterprises.
Rosemont Seneca joined forces in doing business in China with another politically connected consultancy called the Thornton Group. 

The Massachusetts-based firm is headed by James Bulger, the nephew of the notorious mob hitman James “Whitey” Bulger. 

Whitey was the leader of the Winter Hill Gang, part of the South Boston mafia. 

Under indictment for 19 murders, he disappeared. 

He was later arrested, tried, and convicted.
James Bulger’s father, Whitey’s younger brother, Billy Bulger, serves on the board of directors of the Thornton Group. 

He was the longtime leader of the Massachusetts state Senate and, with their long overlap by state and by party, a political ally of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.
Less than a year after opening Rosemont Seneca’s doors, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were in China, having secured access at the highest levels. 

Thornton Group’s account of the meeting on their Chinese-language website was telling: Chinese executives “extended their warm welcome” to the “Thornton Group, with its US partner Rosemont Seneca chairman Hunter Biden (second son of the now Vice President Joe Biden).”
The purpose of the meetings was to “explore the possibility of commercial cooperation and opportunity.” 

Curiously, details about the meeting do not appear on their English-language website.
Also, according to the Thornton Group, the three Americans met with the largest and most powerful government fund leaders in China — even though Rosemont was both new and small.
The timing of this meeting was also curious. 

It occurred just hours before Hunter Biden’s father, the vice president, met with Chinese President Hu in Washington as part of the Nuclear Security Summit.

Chris Heinz (left) with John Kerry at a campaign fundraiser, April 16, 2004.

There was a second known meeting with many of the same Chinese financial titans in Taiwan in May 2011. 

For a small firm like Rosemont Seneca with no track record, it was an impressive level of access to China’s largest financial players. 

And it was just two weeks after Joe Biden had opened up the US-China strategic dialogue with Chinese officials in Washington.
On one of the first days of December 2013, Hunter Biden was jetting across the Pacific Ocean aboard Air Force Two with his father and daughter Finnegan. 

The vice president was heading to Asia on an extended official trip. 

Tensions in the region were on the rise.
The American delegation was visiting Japan, China, and South Korea. 

But it was the visit to China that had the most potential to generate conflict and controversy. 

The Obama administration had instituted the “Asia Pivot” in its international strategy, shifting attention away from Europe and toward Asia, where China was flexing its muscles.
For Hunter Biden, the trip coincided with a major deal that Rosemont Seneca was striking with the state-owned Bank of China. 

From his perspective, the timing couldn’t have been better.
Vice President Biden, Hunter Biden and Finnegan arrived to a red carpet and a delegation of Chinese officials. 

Greeted by Chinese children carrying flowers, the delegation was then whisked to a meeting with Vice President Li Yuanchao and talks with Xi Jinping.
Hunter and Finnegan Biden joined the vice president for tea with US Ambassador Gary Locke at the Liu Xian Guan Teahouse in the Dongcheng District in Beijing. 

Where Hunter Biden spent the rest of his time on the trip remains largely a mystery. 

There are actually more reports of his daughter Finnegan’s activities than his.
What was not reported was the deal that Hunter was securing. 

Rosemont Seneca Partners had been negotiating an exclusive deal with Chinese officials, which they signed approximately 10 days after Hunter visited China with his father. 

The most powerful financial institution in China, the government’s Bank of China, was setting up a joint venture with Rosemont Seneca.
The Bank of China is an enormously powerful financial institution. 

But the Bank of China is very different from the Bank of America. 

The Bank of China is government-owned, which means that its role as a bank blurs into its role as a tool of the government. 

The Bank of China provides capital for “China’s economic statecraft,” as scholar James Reilly puts it. 

Bank loans and deals often occur within the context of a government goal.
Rosemont Seneca and the Bank of China created a $1 billion investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR), a name that reflected who was involved. 

Bohai (or Bo Hai), the innermost gulf of the Yellow Sea, was a reference to the Chinese stake in the company. 

The “RS” referred to Rosemont Seneca. The “T” was Thornton.

The fund enjoyed an unusual and special status in China. 

BHR touted its “unique Sino-US shareholding structure” and “the global resources and network” that allowed it to secure investment “opportunities.” 

Funds were backed by the Chinese government.
In short, the Chinese government was literally funding a business that it co-owned along with the sons of two of America’s most powerful decision makers.
The partnership between American princelings and the Chinese government was just a beginning. 

The actual investment deals that this partnership made were even more problematic. 

Many of them would have serious national security implications for the United States.
In 2015, BHR joined forces with the automotive subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned military aviation contractor Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) to buy American “dual-use” parts manufacturer Henniges.
AVIC is a major military contractor in China. 

It operates “under the direct control of the State Council” and produces a wide array of fighter and bomber aircraft, transports, and drones — primarily designed to compete with the United States.
The company also has a long history of stealing Western technology and applying it to military systems. 

The year before BHR joined with AVIC, the Wall Street Journal reported that the aviation company had stolen technologies related to the US F-35 stealth fighter and incorporated them in their own stealth fighter, the J-31. 

AVIC has also been accused of stealing US drone systems and using them to produce their own.
In September 2015, when AVIC bought 51 percent of American precision-parts manufacturer Henniges, the other 49 percent was purchased by the Biden-and-Kerry-linked BHR.
Henniges is recognized as a world leader in anti-vibration technologies in the automotive industry and for its precise, state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities. 

Anti-vibration technologies are considered “dual-use” because they can have a military application, according to both the State Department and Department of Commerce.
The technology is also on the restricted Commerce Control List used by the federal government to limit the exports of certain technologies. 

For that reason, the Henniges deal would require the approval of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews sensitive business transactions that may have a national security implication.
According to BHR internal documents, the Henniges deal included “arduous and often-times challenging negotiations.” 

The CFIUS review in 2015 included representatives from numerous government agencies including John Kerry’s State Department.
The deal was approved in 2015.