A Chinese engineer and former graduate student from the United States’ Chicago was sentenced to eight years in prison on Wednesday (January 25) for gathering information on possible recruits for Beijing like engineers and scientists in the US, said the Department of Justice (DOJ). Additionally, Ji Chaoqun, the Chinese spy in question was also linked to Beijing’s efforts to steal aviation trade secrets from Washington.
According to reports, the 31-year-old came to the US on a student visa in 2013 to study electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology and later enlisted in the US Army Reserves after lying to his recruiters. Ji was arrested in 2018 and convicted last September for illegally acting as an agent for a foreign government which in this case was China’s Jiangsu Province Ministry of State Security and making a false statement to the US Army.
Reports suggest that the body he was spying for is a critical one which has allegedly been involved in schemes to illegally obtain information about Washington’s industrial and trade secrets. Ji had been accused of supplying intelligence with biographical information on about eight people, which were naturalised American citizens originally from China or Taiwan; some even worked as US defence contractors.
In 2016, the Chinese national enlisted in the US Army Reserves under the program which recruits foreign nations and lied on his application that he has not been in contact with a foreign government within the past seven years said the officials in Washington. Ji was arrested in 2018 after several interactions with a US law enforcement agent posing as a representative of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS).
During these meetings, Ji spoke about how he obtained US citizenship and security clearance due to the Army Reserves programme said the Justice Department. Additionally, he revealed his plans to seek a job at the CIA, FBI or NASA and perform cybersecurity work which would give him access to databases, including those that contained scientific research.
In a statement, the DOJ also said that Ji was working at the direction of Xu Yanjun, who is a deputy division director at the Jiangsu provincial branch of the MMS. Furthermore, the Chinese national’s case was also linked to plotting to steal trade secrets from Ohio-based General Electric Aviation and other companies including US military suppliers, as per AFP.