A Chinese engineer has been sentenced to eight years in prison in the US by a special court in the US state of Illinois for espionage for China. He allegedly provided the Chinese government with information about possible recruitment targets.
Ji Chaoqun, 31, was found guilty in September of “acting illegally as an agent of a foreign government” and “making false statements” after a trial in Chicago.
Ji, who came to the US on a student visa in 2013, was arrested in September 2018 on charges that he had provided Chinese intelligence with information about eight people, all US citizens originally from China or Taiwan, some of whom were US defense officials. were contractors.
Ji is said to have contributed to Chinese efforts over several years to steal trade secrets from Ohio-based GE Aviation – a world-leading aircraft engine manufacturer – and other aviation companies, including suppliers to the US military.
According to the US Justice Department, Ji acted on behalf of Xu Yanjun, a senior official in the Ministry of State Security of China’s Jiangsu province. There, Xu led a major Chinese intelligence unit allegedly attempting to illegally obtain US industrial and trade secrets.
Xu was arrested in Belgium in 2018 and extradited to the United States to face trial. He was found guilty in November 2021 of economic espionage and attempted theft of trade secrets. In November 2022, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
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