A Chinese engineer was sentenced to eight years in prison in the US on Wednesday for providing Beijing with information about profiles of American experts with the aim of recruiting them.
Ji Chaoqun arrived on American soil on a student visa in 2013 and was accused of identifying American scientists and engineers who were likely recruited by Chinese intelligence.
He was arrested in September 2018 for providing those services with information about the profiles of eight people, all naturalized Americans from China or Taiwan, some of whom had worked with the defense sector in the United States.
In September, after a two-week trial in Chicago, he was found guilty of acting unlawfully as an agent of a foreign government and making false statements.
According to the US Department of Justice, Ji Chaoqun acted under the direction of Xu Yanjun, a Chinese secret agent who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the United States for attempting to steal technology from American and French aerospace companies.
This agent was found guilty in November 2021 of trying since 2013 to obtain information on behalf of China about several airlines, including America’s General Electric Aviation and France’s Safran, which had worked with GE to develop an engine.