US charges engineer Xiaoqing Zheng and businessman Zhang Zhaoxi of stealing secrets, spying on General Electric to aid China
- Indictment marks first time US has formally alleged that scheme was carried out to benefit China and that government provided ‘financial and other support’
- Stolen data on GE’s turbine technology was encrypted and secretly embedded them into a digital photograph
US authorities have charged an American engineer and a Chinese businessman with economic espionage and conspiring to steal sophisticated turbine designs to benefit the government of China and their personal business interests.
The 14-count indictment was unsealed by the Justice Department on Tuesday. It says Zheng Xiaoqing of Niskayuna, New York, and Zhaoxi Zhang of China’s Liaoning province teamed up to filch millions of dollars’ worth of General Electric’s aviation trade secrets.
“This is one of the most significant indictments involving China’s alleged theft of technology,” said Michael Wessel, a member of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
“The technologies involved in the indictment go to the heart of China’s deficit in turbine technology.”
Zheng, who has pleaded not guilty, was arraigned Tuesday in Albany, New York, and was released pending trial.
Attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.