HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020583.jpg

124

Exchanges

The Chinese government organizes and pays for exchanges in which participants travel from the United States, divulge technical knowledge through scripted venues, are briefed on China's technology interests, return to their US base to collect more information, and repeat the process. China has a program for what it euphemistically calls "short-term visits" by co-opted foreigners, which, stripped of its rhetoric, is indistinguishable from state-run espionage.

Cooperation organizations and advocacy groups

Many Sino-US S&T "cooperation" organizations in the United States facilitate these transfers and have individual memberships of hundreds to thousands. The figure scales to some ninety such groups worldwide. Members usually are expatriate Chinese, although China is expanding its recruitment of nonethnic Chinese. One significant example of a Sino-US S&T cooperation organization is Triway Enterprise, Inc. (三立国际有限公司), an "external training institute" set up under the auspices of the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs in Falls Church, Virginia, with branches in Beijing and Nanjing. According to the Chinese version of the website, the company "since 1993 has been putting its energy into promoting bilateral exchange and cooperation between China and the US in the fields of S&T, culture, education and management with great success."⁸

China S&T advocacy groups in the United States declare loyalty to China and acknowledge a "duty" to support China's development. Members visit China to lecture, guide Chinese technical projects, transfer technologies, receive shopping lists from Chinese entities, and engage in other kinds of "technical exchanges." Many of them sit on Chinese government boards that decide the future of China's national technology investment. Another example of a China S&T advocacy group is the Silicon Valley Chinese Engineers Association (硅谷中国工程师协会), which describes itself as "a non-profit professional organization formed mainly by the professionals in the Bay Area from mainland China with a mission to promote professionalism and entrepreneurship among members," which is achieved by "organizing a variety of professional activities and establishing channels to allow members to engage in China's rapid economic development" [emphasis added].⁹

Chinese government tech transfer offices, facilitation companies, and career transfer personnel, some of whom are posted to China's diplomatic offices, support and direct the US-based groups. In China, hundreds of government offices are devoted entirely to facilitating foreign transfers of technology "by diverse means."

Joint research

The preferred method of establishing a research beachhead in the United States is through the formation of a joint research center with a prominent US university. One example

Technology and Research

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020583