The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has noted that more than 500 scientists are being investigated for alleged financial ties to foreign competitors, including the Chinese Communist Party. (Schematic representation of scientific staff)
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently told a Congressional Senate hearing that hundreds of scientists from different colleges and universities across the United States who receive U.S. federal funding grants may have been bribed by Chinese Communist infiltration.
More than 500 U.S. scientists are currently under investigation for alleged financial ties to foreign competitors, including the Chinese Communist Party, Michael Lauer, a senior NIH official, told a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing April 21.
Lauer said at the hearing that China (the Chinese Communist Party) supports more than 90 percent of the scientists under investigation in more than 500 cases.
The day’s Senate hearing focused on protecting U.S. biomedical research from foreign entities such as Beijing. in her opening remarks, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the HELP Committee, spoke about a recent NIH report showing 507 U.S. government-funded scientists with ties to foreign entities, which she said showed that 30,000 federal grantees, 507 have financial ties to foreign entities of concern.
She mentioned that individuals who participate in foreign talent programs, commit to patenting in foreign countries or relocate labs to foreign countries would be considered researchers with foreign ties and potential conflicts of interest, and should fully disclose these issues when applying for federal grants.
In that area, Lauer said only 10 percent of all cases investigated were brought to attention because of self-disclosure by scientists, with others tending to lie in areas where they received foreign funding, such as from the Chinese Communist Party.
Many scientists set up a lab or ran a business in China to provide the Chinese Communist regime with technology obtained with U.S. taxpayer funding, he said. There are also scientists who claim they put in 100 percent of their time in the United States, “when in fact they are in China 50 to 60 percent of the time.”
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.Y.), the ranking member of the HELP Committee, denounced the Beijing government “and the Chinese Communist Party as the most sophisticated perpetrators” in the area of stealing U.S. medical technology.
Burr noted that the Beijing government has a systematic strategy of encouraging scientists to work in the United States and then stealing back the property rights to the technology for use by the Chinese Communist authorities.
U.S.-China tensions have escalated in recent years over a number of issues, including human rights concerns, cyberattacks, intellectual property theft and trade-related matters.
Fox News reports that U.S. agencies have terminated the work of some of the scientists involved, dropped supplies of federal funds, and placed some on probation after it emerged that the researchers were infiltrated by foreign countries.
The U.S. Department of Justice has now conducted dozens of prosecutions to combat the practice of researchers stealing U.S. intellectual property for the Chinese Communist Party.
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