China’s friend in the White House, Joe Biden, cancelled Trump’s program to prevent Chinese spying.
Guest post by Lawrence Sellin
Fox News recently reported that five months after a federal jury convicted him, a judge has thrown out three of the four convictions against a University of Kansas researcher, Feng Tao, who carried out work for Fuzhou University in China while he was employed at the University of Kansas and received research funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
Tao was convicted as part of the Department of Justice’s “China Initiative” started in 2018 by President Donald Trump to protect U.S. national security from Chinese spying on U.S. intellectual property and in academia.
The Biden regime cancelled the program.
Yet the Feng Tao case is far from an isolated incident.
Chinese scientists working in the U.S., even those who have become U.S. citizens or permanent residents, routinely receive funding from the Chinese government and collaborate with scientists in Communist China, including scientists from the People’s Liberation Army, all while receiving U.S. taxpayer-funded research grants from the National Institutes of Health and other federal government agencies.
The following is one of likely hundreds if not thousands of Chinese scientists working in the U.S. and collaborating with China, although it does not imply that there was criminal activity.
Shibo Jiang obtained his MS and MD degrees from the First and Fourth Medical University of the People’s Liberation Army.
Between 1997 and 2016, when Shibo Jiang worked in the U.S. and was a Principal Investigator on U.S. research grants amounting to more than $17 million, the vast majority coming from Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he also received support from the Chinese government and actively collaborated with Chinese research institutions including those of the People’s Liberation Army.
This is one such research project.
Note that Shibo Jiang associated himself with both the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute in New York and Fudan University in Shanghai.
The co-authors Yufei Wang, Wanbo Tai, Guangyu Zhao, Shihui Sun and Yusen Zhou are from the State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity, which is part of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences of the People’s Liberation Army, where Wanbo Tai received his Ph.D. and has since worked in the U.S.
Also note that the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas is cited, a facility funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and which houses a Biosafety Level-4 high containment laboratory for research on dangerous viruses.
For that study, Shibo Jiang was funded by both the National Institutes of Health and the Chinese government, although no conflicts of interest were identified.
As if that situation is not shocking enough, here is another 2017 article in which Shibo Jiang collaborated with the “bat woman” Zheng-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the site considered by many as the origin of the COVID-19 virus.
Like the first 2017 article, Shibo Jiang claimed affiliation with both the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute in New York and Fudan University in Shanghai and received funding from both the National Institutes of Health and the Chinese government.
More surprisingly, however, the “bat woman” Zheng-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology was also funded by both Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chinese government.
People’s Liberation Army-trained Wanbo Tai is on both publications as is Lanying Du, who was Shibo Jiang’s student and presumed widow of People’s Liberation Army scientist Yusen Zhou found in the first 2017 article. Lanying Di is now a permanent faculty member at Georgia State University, which also houses a Biosafety Level-4 high containment laboratory for research on dangerous viruses.
At a minimum, there should be investigations to determine whether such research collaboration with China is a wise use of U.S. taxpayer money.
But China’s friend in the White House won’t allow it.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He had a civilian career in international business and medical research. Dr. Sellin is the author of Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution. His email address is [email protected].