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Ashlie Hagenson
This updated survey is based on publicly available information and lists 224 reported instances of Chinese espionage directed at the United States since 2000. It does not include espionage against other countries, against U.S. firms or persons located in China, nor the many cases involving attempts to smuggle controlled items from the U.S. to China (usually munitions or controlled technologies) or the more than 1200 cases of intellectual property theft lawsuits brought by U.S. companies against Chinese entities in either the U.S. or China. The focus is on the illicit acquisition of information by Chinese intelligence officers or their agents and on the increasing number of Chinese covert influence operations.
It should be noted that the incidents of Chinese espionage far outnumber those by any other country, even Russia. The long-term cost to the American economy and national security cannot be precisely measured, but estimates run into the billions of dollars for commercial and technological espionage. Chinese espionage also created immeasurable damage to national security with the theft of weapons technology, including nuclear weapons test data. In the last few years, China has added the theft of massive quantities of personal information (PII), political coercion, and influence operations, to its espionage activities.
It is worth noting that while nationality is a predictive factor for espionage, ethnicity is not. Chinese nationals who come to the US to work or study are a fertile ground for recruitment. Often they intend to return to China or have close family members resident in China, making them more susceptible to coercion. In contrast, Americans of Chinese descent are very unlikely to be recruited.
The Chart below shows the number of publicly reported Chinese espionage incidents over time. Perhaps the most interesting part of this chart is the sharp dip after the 2015 agreement between President Obama and President Xi to restrict commercial espionage by government entities. The decline was quickly reversed within a year of the agreement.
This list is derived from open-source material and likely does not reflect the full number of incidents. It is most likely incomplete and more anecdotal than we would like. As with any list based on publicly availed information, increased numbers of incidents could reflect an increase in activity after 2009 or it could reflect increased public reporting of espionage cases, as greater attention was paid to the problem and the U.S. government became less reluctant (at the end of the Bush Administration) to publicly identify China as the perpetrator. Since these are only reported cases, and given the clandestine nature of espionage, it is likely that this underestimates the actual scope of the problem. The list of individual incidents follows below.
May 2001: Beginning in January 2000, Hai Lin, Kai Xu, and Yong-Qing Cheng formed a joint venture with the Datang Telecom Technology Company of Beijing to steal trade secrets from Lucent.
June 2005: Noshir Gowadia, an American citizen, took six trips to China between 2003-2005 to assist with its cruise missile system by developing a stealthy exhaust nozzle and was paid at least $110,000 by China. He provided them with designs for a low-signature cruise missile exhaust system.
November 2005: Moo Ko-Suen was a representative for an American aerospace firm for 10 years in Taiwan, during which time he acted as an agent for the Chinese government and tried to buy sophisticated military parts and weapons, including an F-16 fighter jet engine and cruise missiles, for China.
May 2006: Shanshan Du stole trade secret information from General Motors for the benefit of a Chinese competitor, Chery Automobile.
June 2006: Lan Lee and Yufei Ge conspired to steal trade secrets related to computer chip design and development from NetLogics Microsystems and TSMC.
December 2006: Fei Ye and Ming Zhong stole trade secrets from two American technology firms to benefit China. They intended to utilize the secrets to build microprocessors for their company, Supervisor Inc., which would share any profits made on the sale of chips to the City of Hangzhou and the Province of Zhejiang in China.
December 2006: Xiang Dong Yu stole trade secret information worth $50-100 million from Ford Motor Company for the benefit of Beijing Automotive Company.
December 2007: Chinese hackers successfully stole information from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the National Nuclear Security Administration.
January 2008: Qinggui Zeng stole trade secret information related to the paint industry from an American firm for the benefit of a Chinese firm.
February 2008: The Department of Justice charged Dongfan Chung, a former Boeing engineer, with economic espionage and serving as a foreign agent for China. Prosecutors determined that he had been acting on Chinese orders since at least 1979. He stole Boeing trade secrets relating to the Space Shuttle, the C-17 military transport aircraft and the Delta IV rocket for China.
February 2008: Tai Shen Kuo, a U.S. citizen, was arrested for providing China with classified information between March 2007 to February 2008. Kuo obtained the information from a Pentagon weapons system policy analyst, Gregg Bergersen.
May 2008: Chinese officials inserted spyware onto the laptop of U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez during a trade mission.
September 2008: Anne Lockwood and Fuping Liu stole trade secret information from Metaldyne to benefit a Chinese competitor, Huafu.
March 2009: David Yen Lee, a technical director with Valspar Corp, illegally downloaded Valspar trade secrets with the intent of delivering them to Nippon Paint in Shanghai, where he had accepted a vice president position.
March 2009: Chinese hackers infiltrated Coca-Cola Co. computer networks and stole trade secret information, including information related to the attempted $2.4 billion acquisition of Huiyuan Juice Group.
March 2009: Chinese hackers stole information from the Office of Senator Bill Nelson in Florida.
March 2009: A Chinese espionage network was discovered to have penetrated political, economic, and social institutions in 103 countries. The network was discovered during a 10-month investigation by researchers at InfoWar Monitor when they were called to investigate the compromise of the Dalai Lama's computer systems.
April 2009: Yan Zhu, along with unidentified co-conspirators, planned to steal trade secrets relating to computer systems and software with environmental applications from his U.S. employer.
October 2009: Hong Meng accepted employment as a faculty member at Peking University, and thereafter began soliciting funding to commercialize his research from Dupont on Organic Light-Emitting Diodes. He shared trade secret chemical processes, including those related to OLEDs, with PKU. Meng was convicted in 2010.
March 2010: NATO and the EU warned that the number of cyberattacks against their networks had increased significantly over the past 12 months, with Russia and China among the most active adversaries.
May 2010: Glenn Shriver attempted to gain access to classified national defense information on behalf of Chinese intelligence officers.
May 2010: Chinese hackers breached the computer network of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and stole information related to U.S. industries.
October 2010: York Yuan Chang and Leping Huang owned a company called General Technology Systems Integration, Inc. (GTSI), which was involved in the export of technology to the PRC. GTSI allegedly entered into contracts with the 24th Research Institute of the China Electronics Technology Corporation Group to design and transfer to the PRC technology for the development of two types of high-performance analog-to-digital converters.
March 2011: Chinese hackers breached the RSA Security division of the EMC Corporation to steal information related to encryption software, compromising RSA SecureID tokens. The stolen information was used in subsequent attacks carried out by China.
April 2011: Between March 2010 and April 2011, the FBI identified twenty incidents in which the online banking credentials of small-to-medium sized U.S. businesses were compromised and used to initiate wire transfers to Chinese economic and trade companies. As of April 2011, the total attempted fraud amounts to approximately $20 million; the actual victim losses are $11 million.
June 2011: Beginning in 2010, Chunlai Yang conspired to steal trade secret information related to the source code of the OS for the Globex electronic trading platform for the benefit of a Chinese firm.
September 2012: Employees of a semiconductor chip equipment manufacturer stole trade secrets related to high-volume manufacturing of semiconductor wafers used in electronic devices for the benefit of a competing Chinese firm.
February 2013: DHS says that between December 2011 and June 2012, cyber criminals targeted 23 gas pipeline companies and stole information that could be used for sabotage purposes. Forensic data suggests the probes originated in China.
March 2013: Beginning in 2012, Chinese hackers targeted civilian and military maritime operations within the South China Sea, in addition to U.S. companies involved in maritime satellite systems, aerospace companies and defense contractors.
December 2013: Six Chinese nationals conspired to steal trade secret information related to seeds from Dupont, Monsanto, and LG seeds for the benefit of Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group, a competing Chinese firm.
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