FBI Arrests Two Chinese Scientists Working in U.S. for ‘Undisclosed Ties’ to Beijing Government

May 14, 2020 (EIRNS)—In the space of 36 hours, and reflecting the McCarthyite environment that has been deliberately fostered in the U.S., the FBI arrested two Chinese scientists, one a professor at the University of Arkansas and the other a former employee of the Cleveland Clinic, on charges of wire fraud, and failing to disclose ties to the Chinese government or other Chinese institutions. EIRNS is not in a position to judge the merits of the specific charges, but the McCarthyite environment being created by the FBI and others is unmistakable.

On May 12, the FBI arrested 63-year-old Simon Saw-Teong Ang, a Chinese engineering professor who has taught at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville since 1988, and who was also a recipient of a grant from NASA. He is charged with failing to reveal that he “had close ties with the Chinese government and Chinese companies,” which he was required to do in order to receive NASA grant money. These “false representations,” the FBI charged, “resulted in numerous wires to be sent and received that facilitated Ang’s scheme to defraud.”

Ang was also a scholar in China’s Thousand Talents program. While the FBI claims that isn’t a crime in itself, the FBI website states that its investigations

“have revealed that the participants are often incentivized to transfer to China the research they conduct in the United States, as well as other proprietary information to which they can gain access, and remain a significant threat to the United States. In some cases, this has resulted in violations of U.S. laws, including economic espionage, theft of trade secrets and grant fraud.”

Today, in Shaker Heights, Ohio FBI agents arrested Dr. Qing Wang, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen who specializes in genetics and cardiovascular disease, and who has been affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic since 1997. He too was arrested on wire fraud charges related to $3.6 million in federal grants. Prosecutors allege that Wang accepted grants from the National Institutes of Health without disclosing that he served at the same time as dean of the College of Life Sciences and Technology at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology—a violation of the terms of the grants. The head of the FBI’s Cleveland office, Eric Smith, charged that Dr. Wang “deliberately failed to disclose his Chinese grants and foreign positions and even engaged in a pervasive pattern of fraud to avoid criminal culpability.”