China-Linked Professor Pleads Guilty

Penny Zhou
By Penny Zhou
November 13, 2020NTD Evening News
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According to the Justice Department, a university professor has pleaded guilty to illegally exploiting federal funds to help China enhance its biomedical research.

Song Guo Zheng was a professor of internal medicine at Ohio State University. He now faces up to five years in prison.

Zheng is part of China’s so-called Thousand Talents program. Through the talent recruitment project, China hires top U.S. scientists from universities and biotech firms to teach at Chinese universities or work in Chinese labs. Many of them, like Zheng, receive U.S. federal funding for their research.

A Chinese state media report shows that the professor has held multiple positions in pro-Beijing Chinese groups in California while he was working as a professor at the University of Southern California. That includes the vice president of the Chinese American Federation and the chairman of the Association of Chinese Scholars and Students from the Chinese province of Anhui.

According to the DOJ, Zheng was arrested in May 22 in Alaska when he was about to board a charter flight and flee to China after he was informed that his American employer was investigating him.

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