China’s Notorious Thousand Talents Program – Equal Opportunity Recruiter – UPDATE

QUICK UPDATE

On June 2, 2019, I published a post where I expressed being intrigued to learn that China’s Thousand Talents Program also recruited non-ethnic Chinese.

At that time, Los Alamos computations physics expert TURAB LOOKMAN had pled not guilty to lying to U.S. government investigators about his recruitment and subsequent acceptance to participate in China’s Thousand Talent’s program.

According to a September 15, 2020, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) press release, LOOKMAN changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to five (5) years probation and a $75,000. fine for providing a false statement to the U.S. Department of Energy.

MORE PROMINENT EXAMPLE

A recent and very prominent example of Chinese state-sponsored recruitment of a non-ethnic Chinese person into the Thousand Talents Program is the indictment of the former Chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department, Dr.Charles Lieber.

Here is a quote from the July 28, 2020, DOJ, press release:

“Under the terms of Lieber’s three-year Thousand Talents contract, Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) allegedly paid Lieber a salary of up to $50,000 per month, living expenses of up to $150,000 and awarded him more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at WUT.” 

MORE READNG

If You Want to Keep Talent Out of China, Invest at Home

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