Student Union
- By Julie Taboh
Harvard Professor Arrest Highlights Intellectual Property Espionage
The recent arrest of a renowned Harvard professor and pioneer in nanoscience sheds light on relationships between American brain power, the Chinese government and funding between the two that involves intellectual property theft.
Charles Lieber, head of Harvard University's chemistry department and a world leader in nanoscience, appeared in a jumpsuit and leg shackles in court in Boston on Jan. 28 when he was charged with lying about receiving funding from Chinese research agencies. Lieber was simultaneously receiving research funding from the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health.
The government alleges that Lieber hid being paid up to $50,000 a month by the Chinese government. He also received more than $1.5 million to create a research lab at Wuhan University of Technology in China, according to court documents.
“This is a small sample of China's ongoing campaign to siphon off American technology and know-how for Chinese gain," said Andrew Lelling, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts in a press conference when Lieber was charged. Lelling led the investigation.
Thursday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Lelling highlighted stepped up efforts to combat Chinese espionage at a conference in Washington, citing the relationships between academics and Chinese funding.
Lieber is alleged to have participated in China's “Thousand Talents Plan,” a campaign to attract American and other specialists worldwide to accelerate its own academic, research and industry efforts.
U.S. colleges, universities, research labs, and industry partners are struggling with how to identify what they see as Chinese coercion and intellectual property theft. Lieber’s arrest is the latest in a string of academics charged with taking funding from Chinese interests or the Chinese government without disclosing it.
Mark Cohen, senior fellow at the University of California Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, told VOA that “this flurry of lawsuits and defunding and a re-examination of bilateral science cooperation … is significant.”
“It shows how pervasive” coercion and questionable funding has become.
Last year a University of Kansas researcher was charged with collecting federal grant money while working full time for a Chinese university.
A Chinese government employee was arrested in a visa fraud scheme that the Justice Department says was aimed at recruiting U.S. research talent.
A university professor in Texas was accused in a trade secret case involving circuit board technology.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced last year that it is investigating whether a dozen researchers there failed to report taking funding from foreign governments, specifically China.
The year before the agency sent a letter to more than 10,000 research institutions urging them to ensure that NIH grantees are properly reporting their foreign ties.
There are some “bad actors out there, but on the other hand, there is also a need for cooperation … a lot of scientists are being encouraged to develop collaborative relationships with Chinese entities,” Cohen said.
Most American scientists and researchers are used to an open environment, he said. Foreign students working on research “for the most part, they aren't working in universities on classified material.”
Cohen advocates stricter guidelines, which some universities have in place, while many do not.
“I think China does have a lot to account for, in this rash of cases, and of some of the other economic espionage cases of the past,” Cohen said. It would helpful too, he added, if China had its own guidelines “to ensure that they were not creating conflicts of interest.”
“We need collaboration. But we just need to do it the right way.”
See all News Updates of the Day
- By VOA News
International students have options to pay for grad school
U.S. News & World Report tackles the challenges of paying for grad school as an international student with this story giving tips on paying for school. Read the full story here. (August 2024)
- By Tracy Liu
Economics, tensions blamed for Chinese students shifting from US to Australia, Britain
U.S. universities are welcoming international students as the academic year begins. But while the total number of foreign students is steadily growing, the top sending country, China, is showing signs of leveling out or shrinking.
Industry analysts say the negative trend is mainly due to higher costs amid China’s struggling economy, with a growing number of students going to less expensive countries like Australia and Britain, and tense ties between Washington and Beijing.
The number of foreign students studying in the U.S. in 2022-23 passed 1 million for the first time since the COVID pandemic, said Open Doors, an information resource on international students and scholars.
While the U.S. saw a nearly 12% total increase year-on-year for that period, the number of international students from China, its top source, fell by 0.2% to 289,526.
That’s 600 fewer students than the 2021-22 academic year, when their numbers dropped by nearly 9%. The COVID pandemic saw Chinese student numbers drop in 2020-21 by nearly 15%, in line with the world total drop.
While it’s not yet clear if the drop is a leveling out or a fluctuating decline, analysts say China’s struggling economy and the high cost of studying in the U.S. are the main reasons for the fall in student numbers.
Vincent Chen, a Chinese study abroad consultant based in Shanghai, said although most of his clients are still interested in studying in the U.S., there is a clear downward trend, while applicants for Anglophone universities in Australia and Britain have been increasing.
"If you just want to go abroad, a one-year master's degree in the U.K. is much cheaper,” Chen said. “Many people can't afford to study in the U.S., so they have to settle for the next best thing."
Data from the nonprofit U.S. group College Board Research shows that in the 2023-24 academic year, the average tuition and fees for a U.S. private college four-year education increased 4% to $41,540 compared with the previous academic year.
The British Council said three to four years of undergraduate tuition in Britain starts as low as $15,000.
The number of Chinese students in Britain was 154,260 in 2022-23, according to the U.K. Higher Education Statistics Agency, HESA, up from 121,145 in the 2018/19 academic year.
Australia’s Home Affairs office said in the 2023-24 program year, China was the top source foreign country for new student visa grants at 43,389, up slightly (1.5%) from the previous year.
Chen said Chinese state media's negative portrayal of the United States and concerns about discrimination have also contributed to the shift.
Bruce Zhang, a Chinese citizen who received his master's degree in Europe after studying in China, told VOA Mandarin he had such an incident occur to him after he was admitted to a U.S. university’s Ph.D. program.
When he entered Boston's Logan International Airport last year, Zhang said customs officers questioned him for more than an hour about his research, and if it had any links to the military, and took his computer and mobile phone for examination.
"Fortunately, I had heard that U.S. customs might be stringent in inspecting Chinese students, so I had relatively few study-related data and documents on my personal computer," he said.
Zhang was allowed to enter the U.S. for his studies in materials science, but the questioning left him so rattled that he has encouraged other Chinese to study elsewhere.
Cui Kai, a study abroad consultant in Massachusetts told VOA Mandarin that experiences like Zhang’s or worse happen for a reason.
"Students who were questioned or their visas were revoked at the customs are usually those who completed their undergraduate studies in China and come to the U.S. for a master's or doctoral degree in a sensitive major," said Cui.
Former President Donald Trump signed Proclamation 10043 in June 2020, prohibiting visas for any Chinese student who “has been employed by, studied at, or conducted research at or on behalf of, an entity in the PRC that implements or supports the PRC's “military-civil fusion strategy.”
The U.S. says China has been using students and scholars to gain access to key technology and, under Proclamation 10043, revoked more than 1,000 visas issued to Chinese nationals and has denied thousands more.
Critics say the policy is costly to the U.S. and is encouraging Chinese students to look to European and other universities.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
- By VOA News
Duolingo report details the reality of Gen Z international students
A report by Duolingo takes a look at the experiences of Gen Z international students studying in the U.S., Australia and the U.K, The Pie reports.
The report, the site says, debunks "characterizations of them as 'tech-obsessed, attention-deficit and self-centered'" and highlights "their emerging role in shaping global politics and economics."
Read the full story here. (August 2024)
- By VOA News
School with the lowest costs for international students
U.S. News & World Report crunched the numbers and came up with a list of 20 U.S. colleges and universities with annual total costs at or below $20,184. Check out these best bargains for international students here. (August 2024)
- By VOA News
How to make the most of schools' international student services
U.S. colleges and universities offer a variety of services for international students.
U.S. News & World Report takes a look at them and details how to best use them. Read the article here. (June 2024)
