After a years-long trial, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose sentenced Zhang Hao, a professor at China’s Tianjin University, to 18 months in prison on Sept. 1 for theft of trade secrets and economic espionage.
Zhang Hao, a 41-year-old Chinese scholar, was accused of conspiring with a colleague at the University of Southern California to steal U.S. secrets through a shell company in the Cayman Islands and sell them to the Chinese government and military, according to a Sept. 1 Bloomberg report. The federal court in the Northern District of California in San Jose presided over Zhang Hao’s trial, which was reportedly held without a jury. The trial was held without a jury, and Zhang Hao’s attorneys presented a “damage control” defense, admitting the prosecution’s arguments. At his sentencing hearing on August 31, the judge ordered Hao Zhang to pay $477,000 in restitution to the victims of his theft (two small technology companies) and recommended that he be sent to a minimum-security prison in California. Zhang Hao’s attorney had no comment on the verdict.
According to information released by the U.S. Department of Justice on June 26, 2010, Zhang Hao and his co-workers conspired to, and did, steal trade secrets from two U.S. companies from 2010 to 2015, and alleged that Zhang Hao conspired with Tianjin University in China to improve the performance and mitigate the interference of cell phones and wireless communication devices. The U.S. Department of Justice said that the stolen technology had taken two decades to develop and research. Zhang Hao stole secrets to help Tianjin University and Zhang Hao’s China-based company compete unfairly in the multi-billion-dollar global market for RF filters for cell phones.
In response, Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said, “The defendants conspired with Tianjin University to bring the trade secrets of many U.S. companies, including their own employers, to China for the benefit of the Chinese government. David L. Anderson, Attorney General of Northern California, also stated that “a free country is naturally innovative. No country is more innovative than the United States. No free country can match our innovation, so inevitably it must resort to theft. Theft is not innovation. By fighting theft, we protect innovation and freedom.” John F. Bennett, the FBI Special Agent in charge of the investigation of the case, further argued, “While this case demonstrates how easily a small number of employees can conspire to steal intellectual property for the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhang’s conviction serves as a warning to our adversaries that the FBI and our partners remain committed to aggressively investigating and Prosecution of these crimes.”
Zhang Hao was reportedly charged in 2015 in an operation launched under former President Barack Obama to crack down on intellectual property theft in China. The operation, which continued into the Trump administration, targeted Chinese scientists and scholars doing research in the United States. Hao Zhang, who was invited to attend an international microwave conference in Phoenix in May 2015, arrived in the United States on a flight from China and was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport upon entering the country, in what Chinese media described as a “fishing expedition” by the United States. His wife and Tianjin University had launched a fundraising campaign to raise money to assist in the lawsuit, and Tianjin University denied that the university had made any improper profits, saying that Zhang Hao was a typical Chinese intellectual who was obsessed with research. In addition, the U.S. government announced in 2015 that it had charged Zhang Hao and six other Chinese citizens with economic espionage, but the other five Chinese citizens indicted at the same time as Zhang Hao were never arrested.
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