| August 24, 2020 03:20 PM
A Texas A&M University professor was arrested for allegedly concealing his participation in China’s Thousand Talents program while receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in NASA research grants, the Justice Department announced on Monday.
Zhengdong Cheng, 53, was arrested in Texas on Sunday on charges of conspiracy, making false statements, and wire fraud. A statement from the Justice Department said that Cheng “led a team conducting research for NASA” while he “willfully took steps to obscure his affiliations and collaboration with a Chinese University and at least one Chinese-owned company” and that “the terms of Cheng’s grant prohibited participation, collaboration or coordination” with China or Chinese companies and universities.
He was set to make his initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sam Sheldon on Monday at 10 a.m. in Houston, Texas.
The FBI said that “Cheng was part of a research team that applied for, and ultimately received, a $746,967 grant to conduct research for NASA” and that “Cheng hid his association with China, Chinese-owned companies, and Chinese universities, which, according to NASA officials, if known to NASA, would have prohibited him from participating in the NASA grant and receiving U.S. Government funding through that grant.”
“Once again, we have witnessed the criminal consequences that can arise from undisclosed participation in the Chinese government’s talent program,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said. “Professor Cheng allegedly made false statements to his university and to NASA regarding his affiliations with the Chinese government. The Department of Justice will continue seeking to bring participation in these talent programs to light and to expose the exploitation of our nation and our prized research institutions.”
The press release from the Justice Department noted that the Thousand Talents program is “designed to attract, recruit and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development, economic prosperity, and national security.” The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Republican Sen. Rob Portman, released a 109-page bipartisan report in November, concluding that foreign countries “seek to exploit America’s openness to advance their own national interests” and that “the most aggressive of them has been China.” It found China used its Thousand Talents program to exploit access to U.S. research labs and academic institutions.
Special Agent Benjamin Harper of the FBI’s Houston Division authored the 24-page criminal complaint, which noted that Cheng “engaged in a scheme” to “defraud” NASA with the goals to “enrich” himself in approximately $86,876 in NASA grant funds, “gain access” to the “unique resources” of the International Space Station, “leverage NASA grant resources to further the research of Chinese institutions,” and “enhance his ability to become a Thousand Talents Plan award recipient from the Government of China by knowingly and intentionally making false statements” in official communications with both Texas A&M and U.S. government grant applications “to hide Cheng’s affiliations with the Chinese government and private entities, thereby inducing Texas A&M University to submit false statements to NASA.”
The complaint notes that Cheng was hired as a professor at Texas A&M in 2004, whereupon he performed research using grants from the U.S. government, including NASA. But Cheng concealed his Thousand Talents connection and hid that he was also the director of the Soft Matter Institute of Guangdong University of Technology in China from 2012 through at least 2018, formed Foshan City Ge Wei Technology Company in affiliation with GDUT in 2014, and was a professor at the Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies at Southern University of Science and Technology in China starting in 2017.
Cheng is not the first person to be accused of being part of the Thousand Talents program and arrested for taking advantage of NASA’s grants — Arkansas professor Simon Saw-Teong Ang, who received millions of dollars of U.S. government research money, including $500,000 from NASA, was arrested for allegedly failing to disclose his extensive financial connections to China back in May.
Multiple members of the Chinese military have been charged by the Justice Department in recent weeks for concealing their ties to China's military and allegedly committing visa fraud while acting as students or researchers at U.S. universities. The Justice Department’s China Initiative aims to combat Chinese espionage, and the United States has arrested and charged a number of scientists, including Harvard’s chemistry department chairman, Charles Lieber.