Chinese Academic Espionage Allegedly Happening at Stanford University
“He sent videos of Americans who had gained fame in China, encouraged Anna to visit Beijing, and offered to cover her travel expenses.”
A few years back, Senate Republicans were looking into this pretty seriously. They need to get back on it.
This is from the Stanford Review:
INVESTIGATION: Uncovering Chinese Academic Espionage at Stanford
This summer, a CCP agent impersonated a Stanford student. Under the alias Charles Chen, he approached several students through social media. Anna*, a Stanford student conducting sensitive research on China, began receiving unexpected messages from Charles Chen. At first, Charles’s outreach seemed benign: he asked about networking opportunities. But soon, his messages took a strange turn.
Charles inquired whether Anna spoke Mandarin, then grew increasingly persistent and personal. He sent videos of Americans who had gained fame in China, encouraged Anna to visit Beijing, and offered to cover her travel expenses. He would send screenshots of a bank account balance to prove he could buy the plane tickets. Alarmingly, he referenced details about her that Anna had never disclosed to him.
He advised her to enter China for only 24 to 144 hours, short enough, he said, to avoid visa scrutiny by authorities, and urged her to communicate exclusively via the Chinese version of WeChat, a platform heavily monitored by the CCP. When Charles commented on one of her social media posts, asking her to delete screenshots of their conversations, she knew this was serious.
Under the guidance of experts familiar with espionage tactics, Anna contacted authorities. Their investigation revealed that Charles Chen had no affiliation with Stanford. Instead, he had posed as a Stanford student for years, slightly altering his name and persona online, targeting multiple students, nearly all of them women researching China-related topics. According to the experts on China who assisted Anna, Charles Chen was likely an agent of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS), tasked with identifying sympathetic Stanford students and gathering intelligence.
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Comments
No surprise here. The surprise would be when s Chinese national isn’t engaged in espionage of one form or another.
“Charlie Chen?” Oh, come onnnnnnnnnn!
Maybe the Education Dept. should investigate the schools that the Chicoms AREN’T trolling for talent. Like having a beanery in town so disreputable that not even the rats will eat there.
So this guy was sitting in China and they never met in person? That’s what I get from the story. Wonder how long this sort of thing can go on with another alleged Stanford student, without someone wondering why they never meet on campus.
Needless to say I can’t blame “Charlie Chen” for any of this, if American students fall for it.
Along the same line, here’s a quote from the linked article.
“Another Stanford student shared an incident involving their professor’s encounter with suspected Chinese espionage. According to the student, the professor recounted needing to schedule a meeting with a Chinese student. When the student declined, citing a mysterious reason, the Professor asked why. The student replied, “You know why.” The professor continued to inquire, only to receive the cryptic response, “I cannot tell you that.” Finally, the professor revealed that the student admitted to meeting a CCP handler.”
So I wonder if this “Chinese student” was even at Stanford, since he refused a meeting with the professor. Having also to meet a CCP handler doesn’t make sense; he could do one meeting then the other. But if he was in an office in China just pretending to be at Stanford, he would have to refuse an in-person meeting.
Communist China has been very thorough in their spying for many decades. In the 1990’s a Chinese restaurant opened just down the street from the NYS Capitol in Albany. The food was terrific, and the place was always packed at lunch. “Charles” was the purported owner. He said he managed the Hong Kong bicycle team (or some such), and he made a habit of sitting down at tables and visiting with customers. After he sat down at my and a friend’s table one day and pumped us for information about what our industry (the cable TV business) was developing, I told my friend he was clearly a spy. One day there was a “closed” sign on the door.. The restaurant’s business had been booming, but the restaurant was not the real business.
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