Juan A.Lozano
Associated Press
Cheng Zhengdong (Photo courtesy of Texas A&M University)
HOUSTON (AP) — A NASA researcher and Texas A&M University professor pleaded guilty to charges of concealing ties to a Chinese government-created university while accepting federal grants.
On September 22, at a hearing in federal court in Houston, Cheng Zhengdong pleaded guilty to two counts of violating NASA regulations and forging official documents.
Cheng’s conviction is part of a program called the “China Initiative,” which was originally launched during the Trump administration. But in February, the Justice Department dropped the program after complaining that it undermined academic collaboration and fostered anti-Asian bias. The department has also suffered high-profile setbacks in individual prosecutions, leading to the dismissal of multiple criminal cases against academic researchers last year. The Justice Department said it plans to set higher standards for such prosecutions.
Cheng was initially charged with wire fraud, conspiracy and false representation when he was arrested in August 2020. But he pleaded guilty to the new charges as part of a deal with federal prosecutors.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sentenced Zheng to serving about 13 months in pretrial detention.
Cheng also agreed to pay $86,876 in damages and a $20,000 fine.
Cheng’s lawyer Philip Hilder said the professor was “relieved that an unfortunate chapter of his life was over”.
But Heard was critical of the China Initiative plan, saying that while it was originally intended to “fight economic espionage … not in this case.”
“The China initiative … has now been phased out as a DOJ priority. The overall mission remains the same, which is to identify economic espionage, but the focus is on targeting wrongdoers by behavior, not race,” Heard said.
Prosecutors allege that Zheng, who was hired by Texas A&M in 2004, concealed his work in China even though his research team received nearly $750,000 in space research grants. NASA may not use funds for any cooperation or coordination with China, Chinese agencies, or any Chinese-owned company.
But prosecutors said Cheng violated those restrictions by maintaining multiple undisclosed ties to China, including working as director of the Soft Matter Institute at a science and technology university in China’s Guangdong province, set up by China’s Ministry of Education.
“Texas A&M and the Texas A&M System take security very seriously, and we are always looking for vulnerabilities, especially when it comes to national security,” Texas A&M System President John Sharp said in a Sept. 23 statement “We will continue to work with our federal partners to ensure our intellectual property is safe from foreign governments trying to harm us,” the statement said.
Zheng was fired from Texas A&M shortly after his arrest. Texas A&M is located approximately 90 miles northwest of Houston.
Heard said Cheng loves academia but is evaluating his options for next steps.
“He is a proud, loyal American citizen who looks forward to being a productive member of our society again,” Heard said.
In a Sept. 23 tweet, FBI Houston Special Agent James Smith said his agency is “prioritizing the investigation of threats to academia as part of our commitment to preventing intellectual property theft by U.S. research institutions and corporations.”
In February, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olson told reporters he believed the initiative was motivated by genuine national security concerns. He said he did not believe investigators would target the professor on the grounds of race, but he also said he had to respond to concerns he heard, including from Asian Americans.
