No begging or borrowing: China is stealing tech to dominate world

China is a country singularly focused on world domination.

And for achieving this, Beijing will use every trick in the book, even theft.

China knows technology is the way to superpowerdom.

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If you can't beat the US, what do you do?

Our next report tells you how China is stealing research.

Science is a tough nut to crack and sometimes you hit a dead end and things appear impossible.

In such cases, most countries opt for technology transfer.

They buy or borrow from people who have already figured it out.

But China likes a third option, theft.

Research is a key arena of the US-China cold war.

China is pumping huge money into research, but the US is still ahead by quite a distance.

So Beijing is deploying espionage to gain the tech edge.

More than 500 US-funded scientists are feared compromised and in most cases, a fixed pattern has been found.

The scientists get money from China and they hide this from the US government.

Then these scientists apply for American grants but are basically on Beijing's payroll.

They are researching in the US and also using its money.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department charged a math teacher at Southern Illinois University.

He secured 151,000 dollars in US funding but hid the fact that since 2018 he has also been getting Chinese funds.

And this trend is pan-industry, from corn farming to cancer research.

China has cast the net wide.

Out of the 500 scientists under investigation, 90 per cent are feared compromised by China.

But have these attempts been successful?

Last year, Song Guo Zheng, a university researcher, admitted to lying for grants.

He secured 4.1 million dollars from the US, but these funds were used to enhance Chinese expertise in rheumatology and immunology.

In 2020, China's tech theft intensified and it actively targeted America's vaccine research.

Hackers linked to Beijing tried to harvest data from Moderna.

Two Chinese nationals were charged by the Justice Department.

America's global recruitment programmes are an easy way in for China.

They are sponsored by the government and there is very little scrutiny because Washington doesn't want to drive away talent.

In the process, American intellectual properties are left exposed.

As many as 73 per cent of graduate engineering students are foreign-born in America.

Twenty eight per cent of science and engineering faculty is from abroad across the country.

Coupled with President Joe Biden's "competition, not conflict approach," this is daylight robbery of valuable tech.

When China is fighting a multi-front war while PLA warships sail the Indo-Pacific, its hackers are busy infiltrating American research.

It is a classic battle strategy to strike at the enemy's blind spot.

If the US doesn't tighten scrutiny and cybersecurity, the much hyped tech edge could be flattened.