Hundreds of U.S. scientists feared compromised by China

More than 500 federally funded scientists are under investigation for being compromised by China and other foreign powers, the National Institutes of Health revealed Thursday.

The federal health officials told a Senate committee that they are fighting to keep up with large-scale Chinese efforts to corrupt American researchers and steal intellectual property that scientists hope will lead to biomedical advances.

NIH has contacted more than 90 institutions about more than 200 scientists they’re concerned about, said Dr. Michael S. Lauer, NIH deputy director for extramural research. But the investigations’ workload is weighing down the nation’s top medical research agency, and new cases are turning up constantly across the government.

The Justice Department charged a math professor and university researcher, Mingqing Xiao, on Wednesday with wire fraud over allegations that he hid his Chinese government funding while obtaining funding from the National Science Foundation.

The Southern Illinois University-Carbondale professor, Mingqing Xiao, worked in the mathematics department since 2000 and obtained the Chinese funding starting in 2018, the Justice Department said.

China has targeted research throughout the economy from corn growers to cancer researchers. Last year, Dr. Lauer said, more than 90% of the scientists under investigation had received support from China.

Gary Cantrell, Health and Human Services Department deputy inspector general for investigations, cited the example of researcher Song Guo Zheng, who is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty last year to lying on applications for NIH grants totaling $4.1 million that he admitted were used to enhance Chinese expertise in rheumatology and immunology.

U. S. officials also have sounded the alarm that China has tried to hack COVID-19 research and is intent on pilfering U.S. science and technology because it believes American innovation will enable it to overtake the U.S. as a global superpower.

The United States’ competition with China escalated sharply during the Trump administration, culminating in the administration’s July 2020 decision to order the closure of the Chinese Consulate in Houston. Trump administration officials accused the consulate of being crucial to a major Chinese spying operation that focused on private American companies fighting the coronavirus. The Chinese Foreign Ministry called the U. S. government’s order outrageous.

But federal officials don’t have a handle on the scope of the attempted foreign influence, and the federal government’s efforts drew questions from lawmakers about who is responsible for identifying and preventing the corruption of American researchers.

“Here’s my concern: There’s no single entity that’s in charge of identifying either falsification of the applications or violations of the rules,” Sen. Richard Burr, North Carolina Republican, said at Thursday’s hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “This seems to almost be a system that’s reliant on somebody to uncover information that is either false or somebody’s actions that break the rules.”

Mr. Burr said institutions have told him they don’t think they are responsible for collecting information on the researchers, and he expressed frustration that the organizations don’t face any penalties for not reporting the researchers.

Dr. Lauer responded that universities are “ultimately responsible” because NIH awards grants to institutions instead of individual scientists.

NIH is only one component of the federal government’s investment in research. Several agencies disburse funds with differing rules.

Universities often have no idea what to look for when investigating foreign influence and counterintelligence threats, said Candice Wright, Government Accountability Office acting director of science, technology ... (Read more)

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