Some Australian researchers visiting China turned out to be effectively Chinese researchers funded by Australians.
What does it mean to be an Australian citizen paid by Australian taxpayers if it’s “OK” to take $150,000 extra from the CCP, plus benefits for the wife and kids, and in some cases also keep that a secret from the Uni in Australia that they work for? How about having a cloned research project in China studying the same high tech topics and producing patents owned by the Chinese government? The “Thousand Talents Plan” has been described by FBI director Christopher Wray as “economic espionage”. It includes military technology, drone automation, AI, biotech, and many high tech areas. To put a fine point on it, some of these researchers are signing up to agreements to obey Chinese laws, and which require them to ask permission from the CCP before they disclose these arrangements to their Australian employers.
We might be tempted to call this all sort of names, but this sort of activity is apparently legal. It’s just a loophole being exploited.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s new report: Hunting the phoenix: The Chinese Communist Party’s search for technology and talent.
Remember Peter Ridd can be sacked for being uncollegial, but it appears that academics who may undermine national interests and give away intellectual property are acting within the law. Where were the Vice Chancellors? What were they thinking: Employment contracts stop Australian professors from speaking freely in Australia, but allow them to serve the CCP at our expense?
Looks like one civilization is fast asleep at the wheel.
Some things matter:
China exploits Australia’s lax laws to sign up researchers for secretive program
Sharri Markson, and Kylar Louisikian, The Australian
The Chinese government is actively recruiting leading Australian scientists for a secretive research program that offers lucrative salaries and perks but requires their inventions to be patented in China and obliges them to abide by Chinese law.
The Australian’s investigation has exposed that universities do not know: how many Thousand Talents Plan recipients are in their employ; if their academics are lodging patents in China; and whether their academics are being paid second salaries by affiliated Chinese universities.
Thank goodness for The Australian newspaper which has a large feature story today. Where was Our ABC?
Andrew Hastie M.P. has called for an “urgent” inquiry into the Thousand Talents Plan.
The Australian’s summary:
- Under “Thousand Talents Plan” contracts, scientists legally sign away the rights to their intellectual property to China.
- A standard clause in the contracts states China: “owns the copyrights of the works, inventions, patents and other intellectual properties produced by Party B (the academic) during the Contract period.”
- Many contracts order the scientist to observe Chinese legal system, stating the academic: “shall observe relevant laws and regulations of the People’s Republic of China and shall not interfere in China’s internal affairs.”
- Australian academics are also warned about religious practices, with contracts often stating: “Party B shall respect China’s religious policies, and shall not conduct any religious activities incompatible with his/her status as a foreign expert.”
- They are offered a lucrative second salary, upwards of $150,000 a year, with generous research funding.
- Other perks include travel, tuition for their children and housing subsidies.
- Some academics are given an entire new laboratory in a Chinese university and team of research staff to work for them.
- They then have a “clone” team in China – often unbeknownst to their Australian employer.
- The academic often makes numerous trips to China to conduct research.
- The aim of the program is to ‘own’ the research conducted and paid for by western universities.
It works out pretty well for interested researchers:
Professor Yu specialises in drone automation and artificial intelligence, and has been working on an area of intense interest to the Chinese government: aerial warfare and co-ordinating thousands of unmanned aerial vehicles to co-operate in the air.
Chinese-language reports state he is part of Chinese government recruitment programs including the Qianjiang Scholar of Zhejiang Provincial Talents program and the Taishan Scholars Project, Shandong Province.
Despite being on full-time pay at Curtin [in Western Australia], where he receives a 60 per cent loading on a professor’s salary and his research institute has been funded to the tune of $4m, The Australian understands he has spent most of the year in China.
After The Australian contacted him and Curtin University, Professor Yu’s Hangzhou Dianzi profile became unavailable for public view. Curtin declined to answer specific questions about him, despite issuing a press release with great fanfare when it appointed him to the role of Optus Chair of Artificial Intelligence in May last year. …
Some in the US woke up to this late last year:
Jenny Leonard, Bloomberg, Dec 2019
Officials are concerned about spying and intellectual-property theft.
U.S. officials say TTP encourages economic espionage and theft of intellectual property, the issue at the heart of President Trump’s trade war with China.
Was any of this a secret?
Hardly. Until last September, China published the names of recruits on an official website. That all ended when a Chinese American engineer (and TTP participant) working for General Electric Co. was arrested for allegedly stealing tech secrets from the company.
That’s a lot of patent applications:
Patent applications from China and the US. : Bloomberg
The CCP have been recruiting scientists all over the world:
Ben Packham in The Australian
Chinese Communist Party uses ‘talent stations’ to lure scientists: report
The Chinese Communist Party has at least 57 talent recruitment “stations” in Australia to lure the top scientists to work for Beijing on Xi Jinping’s goal of global dominance in critical technologies, a new report says.
The ASPI report says an estimated 1000 Australian scientists are believed to have been recruited to participate in its overseas talent plans, with many working on technologies that can be harnessed by the Chinese military.
China’s talent program recruiters are paid up to $40,000 for each scientist they recruit, plus annual operating costs, the report by China analyst Alex Joske says.
They are part of a web of more than 600 such stations located in technologically advanced countries.
In the highest profile example of alleged misconduct by a Chinese talent plan scientist, Harvard Professor Charles Lieber, a nanotechnologist with no Chinese heritage, was arrested earlier this year for allegedly failing to disclose a US$50,000 monthly salary from a Chinese university.
Notably, China doesn’t want to adopt many of our climate scientists, I can’t think why. But there are several that are claimed to be involved.
For example, Wenju Cai at CSIRO is named in many Chinese sites as being a part of the Thousand Talents Plan, though the CSIRO says this is not true. He works at CSIRO in Climate and marine science, and officially also at the Qingdao National Marine Laboratory in China. That lab has 3,000 researchers and some of them are involved in satellite mounted laser detection of submarines at depths of 500m. Professor Cai admits to being a part of the Aoshan Talent program, a different Chinese program which The Australian tells us can pay up to $200,000 a year with research funds of up to $1m, and includes help for some to buy a house if they sign up for the 6 year plan. The Australian does not specifically claim any benefits in Professor Cai’s case.
There is also Huijun Zhao, Griffith University, director of the Centre for Clean Environment and Energy, which researches chemical and microbiological approaches to pollution. The Australian only says he receives a daily allowance for expenses when he is in China.
Also Dai Liming University of NSW, a specialist in carbon based, metalfree renewable energy technology. Professor Andrew McMinn, Uni of Tas, who is a researcher of sea ice ecology and environmental change. His university knew about it.
How about Professor Zhaoyang (Joe) Dong, University of NSW, who is a specialist in power system planning and stability and is director of the UNSW Digital Grid Futures Institute. Professor Dong heads one of Australia’s largest energy research projects — the ARC Hub for Integrated Energy Storage. “As a consultant he also leads the development of the load models for Western Power Corporations daily usage in operations and planning of Western Australia;s transmission network. He further leads the gas and electricity network co-planning for the $12.6m CSIRO Future Grid Project.”
Then there is Professor Guoxiu Wang at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) who denies being a Thousand Talent recruit. He specialises in energy storage and batteries. UTS says that China is loosely referring to him being in the Thousand Talents program and it is merely a mark of respect, not that he is part of the official program. The Australian discovered his name was on 11 patent applications, but Professor Dong says he had no knowledge of 10 of those applications. He has asked for his name to be taken off them.
If there are weaknesses and vulnerabilities in Australian energy grids, China is possibly very well informed of them, and if we did discover an efficient battery we might end up buying them from China and paying for the royalties on their discovery too.
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Commenters please note: “The Australian is not suggesting the academics have acted inappropriately.” That goes for Jo Nova too, and I ask commenters to refrain from suggesting this behaviour is illegal. It may be unethical, unAustralian, shortsighted, naive and selfish, but it is not illegal. More fool us.
There are plenty of targets to blame for enabling this behaviour and allowing this to go on for years.