Doctor who defected to U.S. says Chinese scientists trained to steal U.S. lab research for Beijing

A Chinese doctor who fled his home country after blowing the whistle regarding COVID-19 research says that Chinese scientists working in America are trained to steal research from U.S. institutions and represent a significant national security threat. 

Li-Meng Yan, a Chinese-educated doctor born in Qingdao, China, says that Chinese scientists are obligated by the government through a “contract” to help steal U.S. intellectual property, research, and anything else of value for use by the Chinese Communist Party. 

The doctor’s assessment comes as the Trump administration has launched a vetting process for the hundreds of foreign scientists currently working in the United States from countries of concern like China who were granted visas with the help of the National Institutes of Health and other federal research agencies, Just the News reported this week. 

Researchers becoming agents for CCP 

“Scientists getting visa from China to the US, they are visiting scholars. They have signed the contract with Chinese government to go back to China, serve China with whatever they can get from the US,” Dr. Li-Meng Yan told the Just the News, No Noise TV show. 

That's why they get visas from the Chinese government. So from the beginning, they have already made a deal with the CCP and become CCP's, kind of agents,” Yan added. “So China has these people come here, grab your intellectual properties, grab your technologies, compromise your people, and that is like the tumor, like the parasites go to your body, go to your country.”  

“So China uses these people, and that is China's national strategy. So the US government must treat it as… [a] national threat… not only in individual cases," she concluded. 

Yan fled China in April 2020 to the United States, bringing with her claims that the COVID-19 virus was “produced in a laboratory” by Chinese scientists. She published several unreviewed papers with her arguments that were widely criticized by the U.S. medical establishment. Since Yan first came forward, evidence has emerged that at least one U.S. intelligence agency has determined that the virus was likely manufactured in a laboratory, Just the News previously reported.

Concerns about Chinese scientists working in American laboratories have recently sharpened after two researchers working out of a lab at the University of Michigan were charged with trying to smuggle a toxic pathogen into the United States. 

These incidents, Yan said, point towards the real threat of China using U.S. laboratories and technology to develop bioweapons that could target American food supplies. Yan said that the Chinese have specifically identified the use of bioweapons that affect a country’s agriculture as “the poor people's nuclear weapons.” 

“[The] FBI have caught CCP agents pretending to be researchers smuggling the deadly fungus, and also the round worms, which can cause biosecurity threats to agriculture and humans and the animals in the U.S. through your customs,” Yan said. 

The smuggling case alarmed the new FBI leadership, which said that the case exposes a serious national security risk with U.S. scientific research that relies on foreign scientists. 

FBI advisor: "Quiet infiltration"

The bureau promised that it would root out foreign influence in the process of awarding government money to foreign scientists in an effort to reduce the vulnerability.

"The CCP’s quiet infiltration of our research ecosystem is a direct threat to our national security, biosecurity, and economic independence," Erica Knight, an adviser to FBI Director Kash Patel, previously told Just the News. "The Director understands these threats better than anyone, and under his leadership, we will aggressively root out every trace of corrupt foreign influence."

The case involved two Chinese-born researchers, Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, who were charged by the Justice Department with an attempt to smuggle a fungus called Fusarium graminearum through customs. The fungus is classified in the scientific literature as a “potential agroterrorism weapon” because it affects wheat, barley, maize, and rice by causing “head blight,” according to the Department of Justice. 

The scientists were working for the laboratory, which is headed by lead researchers, Chinese-born scientists Ping He and Libo Shan, who received funding from the National Institutes of Health for their work. The laboratory conducts research on plant immunity, according to its website. NIH records show Libo Shan and Ping He received more than $7.6 million in total funding between two sponsored projects, one awarded to each scientist.

Recent incidents involving Chinese scientists, including another incident where a Chinese researcher attempted to smuggle in roundworms capable of destroying crops, have spurred the Trump administration to launch an intensive vetting process for the hundreds of foreign scientists brought into the United States from "countries of concern," Just the News reported this week.

As many as 1,000 scientists identified in NIH alone

The review began weeks ago, around the same time that charges were filed against the Chinese researchers, over concerns that scientists were not receiving proper vetting for ties to the Chinese military or Communist Party by past administrations. 

Officials told Just the News on Tuesday that as many as 1,000 scientists from countries of concern — a large number specifically from China — have been identified inside NIH alone, prompting a wide-ranging review by the agency's intelligence security office. 

The effort, which only recently kicked into high gear, contrasts sharply with the loose screening measures that prevailed during the prior leadership of the NIH, Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, who both departed before Trump became president, the officials told Just the News. 

That lax system remained under Biden despite multiple warnings from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) about the risks of undue foreign influence or theft of federal research. 

GAO, the investigative and auditing arm of Congress, has issued more than a half-dozen reports in the last decade warning that federal agencies lack the necessary safeguards to protect intellectual property from foreign theft and research from foreign influence, especially from threats affiliated with China. 

Wider concerns emerge

“U.S. research may be subject to undue foreign influence in cases where a researcher has a foreign conflict of interest,” the GAO added in a 2021 report that specifically highlighted vulnerabilities at the research universities that partner with NIH.

The three recent scientists charged in Michigan for their attempts to smuggle in dangerous plant pathogens are part of wider concerns about China’s ability to threaten the United States from within. 

“We know that with the open border, thousands, tens of thousands, of Chinese came, most of them desperate Chinese wanting to live in a free society, but also, especially towards the end of the Biden administration, there were a lot of packs of Chinese males coming in from groups of four to 15, and we saw them with identical kit,” Gordan Chang told the Just the News, No Noise TV show. 

“Now with this, there is an uptick in tempo of incursions and attempted incursions into our military bases, illicit surveillance of those bases, plus illicit surveillance of our infrastructure. So those networks, I think, are ready to strike, and that, to me, would be the single greatest threat,” he added.