Chinese Government-Paid Scientists Plead Guilty to Stealing Research From an American Children’s Hospital

A Chinese researcher pled guilty on July 30 for conspiring to steal proprietary trade secrets from a hospital research institute in the United States, and for the wire fraud that accompanied the theft. This was no ordinary hospital research facility, either. The victim was no less than the Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Research Institute. The hospital earned a place on the Honor Roll in U.S. News and World Report’s latest rankings of similar hospitals in America.

The FBI called the theft “another example of economic malfeasance related to the People’s Republic of China.” It added that “far from being an isolated incident, we see the PRC implicated in around 60 percent of all trade secret theft cases.”

The case illustrates one of the worst sides of the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign to empty out the intellectual property coffers of not only the United States, but anywhere in the world where a hard-won nugget of scientific or engineering value may lurk.

Read more