China defends science exchange program following US arrest

BEIJING – China connected Wednesday defended its planetary technological speech programs successful the aftermath of the condemnation of a Harvard University prof charged with hiding his ties to a Chinese-run recruitment program.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said China manages specified exchanges on the aforesaid lines arsenic the U.S. and different countries.

U.S. agencies and officials should not “stigmatize” specified programs and “instead bash thing conducive to China-U.S. technological and people-to-people exchanges and cooperation,” Zhao said.

Charles Lieber, 62, the erstwhile seat of Harvard’s section of chemistry and chemic biology, pleaded not blameworthy to filing mendacious taxation returns, making mendacious statements, and failing to record reports for a overseas slope relationship successful China.

Lieber’s defence attorney, Marc Mukasey, had argued that prosecutors lacked impervious of the charges, maintaining that investigators kept nary records of their interviews with Lieber anterior to his arrest.

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Prosecutors argued that Lieber, who was arrested successful January, knowingly hid his engagement successful China’s Thousand Talents Plan to support his vocation and reputation. The Chinese programme is designed to enlistee radical with cognition of overseas exertion and intelligence spot who could walk secrets connected to China.

Lieber denied his engagement during inquiries from U.S. authorities, including the National Institutes of Health, which had provided him with millions of dollars successful probe funding, prosecutors said.

Lieber besides concealed his income from the Chinese program, including $50,000 a period from the Wuhan University of Technology, up to $158,000 successful surviving expenses and much than $1.5 cardinal successful grants, according to prosecutors.

In exchange, they said, Lieber agreed to people articles, signifier planetary conferences and use for patents connected behalf of the Chinese university.

The lawsuit is among the highest illustration to travel from the U.S. Department of Justice’s “China Initiative.”

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The effort, launched successful 2018 to curb economical espionage from China, has faced disapproval that it harms world probe and amounts to radical profiling of Chinese researchers.

Hundreds of module members astatine Stanford, Yale, Berkeley, Princeton, Temple and different salient colleges person signed letters to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland calling connected him to extremity the initiative.

The academics accidental the effort compromises the nation’s competitiveness successful probe and exertion and has had a chilling effect connected recruiting overseas scholars. The letters besides kick the investigations person disproportionally targeted researchers of Chinese origin.

Lieber has been connected paid administrative permission from Harvard since being arrested successful January 2020.

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