{"id":2683,"date":"2019-07-31T17:18:01","date_gmt":"2019-07-31T17:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackopspartners.com\/?p=2683"},"modified":"2019-07-31T17:18:01","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T17:18:01","slug":"texas-man-convicted-of-stealing-us-marine-tech-to-benefit-beijing-regime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/texas-man-convicted-of-stealing-us-marine-tech-to-benefit-beijing-regime\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Man Convicted of Stealing US Marine Tech to Benefit Beijing Regime"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
A federal jury in Washington has convicted a Texas man of conspiracy to commit theft<\/a> of trade secrets<\/a> in order to transfer dual-use marine technology to the Chinese regime and its state-owned companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shi Shan, 54, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Texas, was convicted following a nine-day trial, according to a July 29 press release<\/a> from the U.S. Department of Justice. He was acquitted of two other charges: conspiracy to commit economic espionage<\/a> and money laundering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The trade-secret theft charge was brought against Shi and a group of co-defendants in 2017. In 2018, the other two charges were added to Shi\u2019s indictment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shi led a\u00a0scheme<\/a>\u00a0to recruit former and current employees at the Houston-based\u00a0Trelleborg Offshore<\/a>\u00a0and entice them to steal proprietary technology for manufacturing syntactic foam, a strong, lightweight material that has both military and commercial applications, such as deep-sea oil and gas drilling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trelleborg Offshore is a subsidiary of the Sweden-based Trelleborg Group, a top manufacturer of high-performance engineered plastics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shi transferred the technology to China<\/a> via his role as president of CBMI, a U.S. subsidiary of the Chinese firm CBM-Future New Material Science and Technology Corp. (CBMF).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both CBMI and CBMF have been indicted on the three charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Co-defendant Liu Gang, 32, was another chief mastermind, according to prosecutors. He was a material development engineer at Trelleborg, who allegedly transferred company trade secrets to CBMI, and later worked at CBMI, doing research and development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shi also sought to obtain trade secrets by attempting business relationships between CBMI, Trelleborg, and other U.S. firms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through Shi\u2019s theft of Trelleborg\u2019s technology, CBMF eventually established a Chinese factory in 2016 to manufacture syntactic foam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CBMF received contracts to provide a number of state-owned entities with buoyancy materials, including China Shipbuilding Industry Corp., according to the federal indictment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n n May, the U.S. Department of Commerce<\/a> added CBMF to its \u201cEntity List\u201d\u2014effectively a trade blacklist\u2014for participating in the \u201cprohibited export of controlled technology concerning the manufacture of syntactic foam and supplying syntactic foam to PRC [People\u2019s Republic of China] state-owned enterprises, PRC defense industrial corporations, and PRC military-related academic institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Chinese company was also part of a national marine engineering team, working with state-owned companies to develop deep-sea buoyancy materials and \u201cadvance Chinese military and civilian interests,\u201d according to the indictment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShi and his co-conspirators went to great lengths to cash in on the Chinese government\u2019s desire to obtain syntactic foam technology,\u201d stated Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski in the press release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beijing has publicly stated that developing marine technology is one of its economic priorities, including in its latest industrial plan, the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016\u20132020), and industrial roadmap, \u201cMade in China 2025<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers said that this case exemplifies \u201cChina\u2019s economic aggression\u201d and the threat it poses to U.S. companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shi will be sentenced on Oct. 25, according to the press release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CBMF itself has extensive ties to the Chinese regime, partially through one of its founders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Chinese government websites, CBMF was founded in May 2012 by Qiao Yingjie, a material science professor from Harbin Engineering University, and three Chinese companies in Linhai, a county-level city in Zhejiang Province. CMBF said on its website that Qiao became vice chairman in October 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Qiao\u2019s personal homepage on the university website shows that he was a former member of the Heilongjiang provincial committee of the People\u2019s Political Consultative Conference, which is an advisory body for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a 2017 Harbin Engineering University school publication, Qiao was quoted as saying that as a committee member, he must do more \u201cpioneering work\u201d to contribute to the country\u2019s prosperity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also that year, the university announced on its website that Qiao was hired for five years as a committee member at a nuclear reactor fuel and materials laboratory located in the Nuclear Power Institute of China (NPIC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n NPIC is a subsidiary of China\u2019s state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), which oversees China\u2019s civilian and military nuclear programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Casey Fleming, CEO of BlackOps Partners, a consultancy specializing in guarding organizations against theft of trade secrets, told The Epoch Times this case exemplifies a small part of a broader plan employed by the Chinese regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Chinese Communist Party has an insatiable thirst for our technology to dominate the global order\u2014both economically and militarily,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On July 23, FBI Director Christopher Wray told senators that the agency has more than 1,000 active investigations<\/a> into theft of U.S. intellectual property, \u201calmost all leading back to China.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe current FBI caseload of 1,000 is a fraction of the actual volume of theft committed by the Chinese Communist Party,\u201d Fleming said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chinese state-sanctioned economic espionage has been underway for several decades, Fleming said, adding that senior leaders across all U.S. industries should understand the risks posed by the regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSenior leaders must understand that they are at war and must act accordingly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBenefiting China<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
CBMF<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Grand Scheme<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n