New Chinese institute lures top U.S., Western scientists to obtain advanced American technology

November 13, 2023

China is investing more than $1.4 billion in a new institute run by former scientists at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory, part of an ambitious program to hire top U.S. scientists and obtain advanced American technology, according to an investigation by The Washington Times.

The Eastern Institute of Advanced Study (EIAS) is described on its Chinese website as the precursor to the planned Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) in Ningbo, China. Organizers are paying American scientists million-dollar salaries and providing other lucrative benefits for their knowledge of cutting-edge technology that China has been unable to generate independently.

The program has hired some of the United States’ most experienced scientists, according to documents and open-source research specialists who have studied the project.

The EIAS and the proposed EIT are below the radar and backed financially and politically by the regional Chinese Communist Party in Ningbo, south of Shanghai. The project is the latest version of Beijing’s Thousand Talents recruitment program.

The Justice Department’s China initiative targeted the Thousand Talents program for its focus on American technological knowledge and skills. Since 2018, the Justice Department unit has prosecuted more than 20 U.S. figures with ties to American universities. Many of them were allegedly involved in sensitive U.S. government research while covertly working for Chinese government-linked projects.

The China initiative was launched during the Trump administration in a bid to halt an estimated $250 billion to $600 billion annual loss from Chinese technology theft. The Biden administration halted the legal initiative over concerns that the prosecutions appeared racially motivated.

The Times investigation into the technology theft and recruitment program is based on information and interviews provided by specialists with knowledge of the program, documents outlining the goals and objectives of the project, and information posted on the Chinese internet.

The EIAS plan for the Eastern Institute of Technology includes a multi-acre campus in Ningbo, but the purpose is to systematically steal U.S. intellectual property, mainly in the field of semiconductors, according to security researchers familiar with the programs.

The ‘Kunpeng Plan’

China is calling the talent recruitment effort the “Kunpeng Plan,” according to EIAS documents. The plan is a crucial element of China’s answer to multibillion-dollar U.S. investments in semiconductor manufacturing backed by U.S. export curbs on sales of advanced microchips to China.

Kunpeng is a term derived from a mythical Chinese leviathan-roc, a creature that transforms from a large fish into a predatory bird.

In addition to hiring Nobel Prize-level technology specialists, the EIAS plans to obtain advanced technology from the United States in the areas of semiconductors, artificial intelligence, batteries and advanced computing.

“The practices of EIT faculty and administration would be blatant violations of trade secrets and noncompete clauses in any U.S. company,” said one expert who has studied the project.

The EIAS plan is funded by an initial commitment of $4 billion from Yu Renrong, founder and chairman of Will Semiconductor Co. Ltd. in Shanghai. The Chinese government agreed to provide matching funding of 20% to 30% of the initial investment.

The planned Eastern Institute of Technology website describes “a new-style research university” funded by Mr. Yu, a Ningbo-based billionaire and CEO of OmniVision Technologies. The local Zhejiang government provided a large plot of land that eventually will become a high-tech university campus.

Will Semiconductor was relatively small until 2019, when it quietly purchased the U.S.-based OmniVision for $2.178 billion, assisted by a $50 billion grant from the China National Integrated Circuit Investment Fund. The fund’s publicly stated goal is to pursue China’s “fusion projects” benefiting the commercial and military sectors.

OmniVision is among the world’s leading providers of image sensors --- critical elements for self-driving cars, medicine, cameras and phones — and weapons systems. Mr. Yu did not immediately respond to a request for comment submitted through an OmniVision spokesman.

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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/nov/13/new-chinese-institute-lures-top-us-western-scienti/