A Tianjin University professor lured back to China from the United States under a government programme to recruit global talent was accused of indecent solicitation of an underage girl during a police sting in Illinois nearly five years ago, an official report said yesterday.
The China Youth Daily's revelation of the allegation against chemistry professor Yao Qingwei when he taught at Northern Illinois University (NIU) triggered fierce debate online over the government's plan to recruit overseas talent.
Yao, now 47, was arrested in October 2006 in an internet sex sting by Kankakee county police, according to local newspapers dated then. He was charged with six counts of indecent solicitation of a child over the internet and was released after posting a US$10,000 bond, according to The Daily Journal, a newspaper in Kankakee.
According to The Daily Journal, Yao was charged in an attempt to meet the person he thought was a 13-year-old girl he had contacted on the internet. But the girl Yao was talking to was really a police officer with the a cyber crime task force.
Further information about the case could not be obtained, but Yao was dismissed last year by NIU, and his appeal against the decision was denied, according to a statement by the university dated last year.
Calls to Yao by the South China Morning Post went unanswered.