Szuhsiung Ho is not the first person of Chinese origin to be arrested in the US over industrial spying.
A string of cases have fuelled suspicions in the US and beyond that some Chinese firms will resort to any measures to obtain valuable intellectual property that could give them a technological leg-up.
In 2010, former Boeing engineer Dongfan “Greg” Chung was jailed for 15 years and nine months for economic espionage after he was convicted of passing trade secrets to Beijing to assist the Chinese aviation industry.
The engineer, who worked on Nasa’s space shuttle programme, had stored binders full of information about US military aircraft in his home, collecting data that he passed on to China over three decades. The documents included design manuals for the US Air Force’s B-1 bomber, the C-17 military cargo plane, the F-15 fighter jet, as well as Chinook helicopters.
In letters to a Chinese state official, Chung said that he wanted to “make some contributions to the modernisations [sic] of the Motherland”.
One letter from a Chinese official, found at Chung’s house and written in 1987, said: “It is your honour and China’s fortune that you are able to realise your wish of dedicating yourselves to the services of your country.”
FBI agents began looking into Chung while investigating a separate case against Chinese-born naturalised US citizen Chi Mak. Mak was found guilty in 2007 of conspiring to export sensitive defence technology to China while working for defence contractor Paragon Power.
He was caught when family members were searched at Los Angeles airport and found to have a CD full of classified information. The information Mak passed on allegedly helped China build its own version of Aegis, an American radar system built to protect military ships. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison for acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government.
More recently Chinese citizen Mo Hailong, commonly known as Robert Mo, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal agricultural trade secrets.
In January Mo admitted digging up corn seeds from an Iowa farm to send back to China, breaching the intellectual property rights of agrochemicals conglomerate Monsanto and seed producer Du Pont Pioneer. He is yet to be convicted or sentenced, but conspiracy to steal trade secrets is a felony that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.
The Justice Department (DoJ) said the theft was on behalf of “companies controlled by the government of the People’s Republic of China”.
Repeated allegations of spying by state-sponsored hackers have also added to tensions between the west and China. In 2014, the DoJ indicted five Chinese military officers with stealing data from six US companies and unions in an eight-year espionage campaign that targeted firms including metals giant Alcoa and nuclear firm Westinghouse Electric.
Oil giants BP, Shell and Exxon Mobil were among companies which had their systems infiltrated by hackers in China, uncovered by internet security firm McAfee in 2011. The attacks, part of a lengthy campaign nicknamed “Night Dragon”, targeted “project-financing information with regard to oil and gas fields and operations”, according to McAfee, including information about the location of potentially lucrative oil reserves.
Google’s travails in China, where the search engine is banned, are well documented. In 2010, the US internet firm said a cyber-attack originating in China had targeted its intellectual property. Google said the attackers’ main aim was to infiltrate the email accounts of Chinese dissidents and human rights activists, but it also flagged up efforts to steal information from companies in industries including chemicals, technology and finance.
In 2014, a Chinese hacker group called Putter Panda, thought to be based in the offices of the People’s Liberation Army, was said by security experts to have hacked satellite technology companies in the US and UK.
A report by BT and KPMG warned earlier this year of the “industrialisation of cybercrime”. The report said today’s cybercriminals often work for complex operations akin to businesses, with human resources divisions and budgets for research and development. Some are so sophisticated that they are able to hijack senior executives’ email accounts and fake correspondence to convince junior company employees to approve transactions.
