Former GE employee sentenced for conspiring to steal trade secrets for China
Zheng intended to steal trade secrets, intellectual property, sensitive technologies
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A former employee of General Electric (GE) was sentenced on Tuesday to two years in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets to benefit the People's Republic of China.
Xiaoqing Zheng, a 59-year-old resident of Niskayuna, New York, was convicted of conspiracy to commit economic espionage in March 2022. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), he worked for GE Power in Schenectady, New York, from 2008 to 2018 as an engineer who specialized in turbine sealing technology.
Evidence presented at his jury trial showed that Zheng conspired with others who were based in China to steal GE's trade secrets related to the company's ground-based and aviation-based turbine technologies. The economic espionage was intended to benefit the People's Republic of China (PRC), including China-based companies and universities that research, develop and manufacture parts for turbines.
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The General Electric logo appears above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (AP Photo/Richard Drew/File / AP Newsroom)
"This is a case of textbook economic espionage. Zheng exploited his position of trust, betrayed his employer and conspired with the government of China to steal innovative American technology," said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the DOJ’s National Security Division. "The Justice Department will hold accountable those who threaten our national security by conniving to steal valuable trade secrets on behalf of a foreign power."
As part of Zheng's sentence, the federal judge required him to pay a $7,500 fine and serve one year of post-imprisonment supervised release.
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According to FBI Counterintelligence Division Assistant Director Alan E. Kohler Jr., Zheng was a "Thousand Talents Plan member and willingly stole proprietary technology and sent it back to the PRC."
The Thousand Talents Plan is an initiative of the PRC government that recruits experts abroad with access to intellectual property, trade secrets and other sensitive information or advanced technologies that members provide to the Chinese government.
A GE spokesperson told Fox Business in a statement, "At GE, we aggressively protect and defend our intellectual property. The defendant stole our IP, and we are gratified by the verdict and the Judge's acknowledgment about the seriousness of this felony crime."
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The economic espionage was intended to benefit the People's Republic of China, including China-based companies and universities that research, develop and manufacture parts for turbines. (Chinatopix via AP/File / AP Newsroom)
The Zheng case is one of many examples of the Chinese government's efforts to steal intellectual property from U.S. companies to benefit its industries – particularly its defense sector.
In mid-November, a Chinese intelligence officer was sentenced to 20 years in prison following a conviction on multiple charges related to economic espionage and trade secret theft targeting GE Aviation's advanced aircraft engine fans along with a French aviation company.
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In remarks at the Hudson Institute in 2020 that underscored the breadth of China's espionage efforts, FBI Director Christopher Wray said, "We've now reached the point where the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours. Of the nearly 5,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases currently underway across the country, almost half are related to China."