Fired Winnipeg lab scientists and married couple Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng are actively engaged in research work in China with various organizations, some of which have close links to the Chinese military, an investigation by The Epoch Times shows.
The two are also using aliases in some instances, while Ms. Qiu has been filing patents related to her area of research in Canada.
Ms. Qiu and Mr. Cheng were escorted out of the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg by the RCMP in July 2019. They were subsequently fired in January 2021 for their undisclosed involvement with Chinese regime entities, which put Canada’s security at risk, according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
CSIS says the two scientists lied about their ties to
China’s “talent programs,” which are focused on economic espionage. They also provided unauthorized access to Chinese nationals at the Winnipeg lab, and
collaborated with Chinese military leaders who are engaged in biodefence and bioterrorism research. As well,
Ms. Qiu was involved in high-risk research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Position at Chinese University
As late as Feb. 28, when the federal government released declassified reports related to the firing of the two scientists, Ms. Qiu’s name was
listed as a faculty member on the public website of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), which has ties to the Chinese military. However, her name has since been
removed.
Her affiliation with the university also appears on a March 14, 2023,
document by the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association announcing the initiation of a project related to the development of Ebola therapeutic antibodies.
Ms. Qiu is listed as a member of the Life Sciences and Medicine faculty at USTC.
Her
name on a list as a member of the editorial board of the Chinese journal Zoological Research also shows her affiliation with the university. Online archive records
indicate that as recently as Aug. 3, 2020, when she was still employed at the Winnipeg lab, the journal’s list mentions her position at the NML.
The USTC is a “red university,” according to its official website. It was founded in 1958 in Beijing by “revolutionaries and scientists of the old generation of our [Chinese Communist] Party for the cause of
‘Two Bombs, One Satellite,’” the website says, referring to the Party’s early nuclear and space project launched shortly after it came to power.
Alias ‘Sandra Chiu’
Ms. Qiu is now using the name “Sandra Chiu” when authoring articles published in English-language journals.
A 2022
paper related to mRNA vaccines published in the journal Nature lists “Sandra Chiu” from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) as one of the co-authors. That name is changed to Ms. Qiu’s original name, “Xiangguo Qiu,” in a Chinese translation of the article that appears on the official WeChat
channel of the Chinese-language journal Chemistry and Materials Science.
The name Sandra Chiu, with a listed affiliation with the USTC, also appears as a member of the editorial board of the
Virologica Sinica, an academic journal co-founded by the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Society for Microbiology.
An
earlier version of Virologica Sinica’s website accessible through Internet Archives shows that back in 2020, the name was listed as Xiangguo Qiu, with her affiliation being with the University of Manitoba.
The editor-in-chief of the journal is Shi Zhengli, a top scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology nicknamed “bat woman” for her research related to bat coronaviruses.
Ms. Qiu’s
name under Sandra Chiu appears in several scientific papers from 2022 onwards.
Patents
Among the concerns raised about Ms. Qiu while employed at the Winnipeg lab was her filing of two patents in China, in October 2017 and January 2019, related to her field of research at the NML, which potentially violated the lab’s intellectual property rights.
Since being escorted out of the Winnipeg lab in July 2019, Ms. Qiu has filed
four more patents in China between 2022 and 2023.
Two of the patents, filed in June 2022 and August 2023, list the patent owner as the University of Science and Technology of China. The patents relate to the prevention and treatment of respiratory viral infections and coronaviruses.
The other two patents, both filed in June 2023, list the patent owner as the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The patents relate to antibodies for the Nipah virus, one of the two types of viruses that Ms. Qiu arranged to be shipped to the Wuhan Institute of Virology from the Winnipeg lab while she was still employed there.
The Epoch Times asked the Public Health Agency of Canada, which oversees the NML, if it has any concerns about potential intellectual property issues related to Ms. Qiu’s latest patents filed in China being based on research while she was in Canada.
A spokesperson said that since Ms. Qiu has not been an employee of the lab since January 2021, the agency “will make no comment on any work she has undertaken or patents filed since that date.”
State-Funded Book on Ebola
Ms. Qiu is also set to publish a state-funded book on Ebola, according to an
announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology on Oct. 16, 2023.
Her book is part of around 200 other publications being announced by the ministry. Titled “Introduction to Ebola Virus Disease and Its Prevention and Control,” it will be published by the Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press. According to the
Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the Wuhan-based Huazhong University is a “very high risk” institute due to its high number of defence laboratories and close links to China’s defence sector.
The state agency that oversees the granting of the funds for the books states that such projects need to be “carried out in accordance with the Chinese Communist Party’s publishing policy” and “guided by China’s technological development policies.”
Alias ‘Kaiting Cheng’
As early as May 31, 2021, Mr. Cheng is
listed as being the chief technical officer in immunology at the KingMed Diagnostics Group, a medical testing company headquartered in Guangzhou in the south of China.
KingMed was founded in 1994 by Yaoming Liang, a
member of the Chinese Communist Party.
A post on the company’s official WeChat channel features information on Mr. Cheng, and shows him in a photo wearing a company shirt. The date shows the post was made after the two scientists were escorted out of the Winnipeg lab in July 2019, but before they were officially fired in January 2021.
Elsewhere, Mr. Cheng’s first name, Keding, is changed to “Kaiting” in
posts related to the company. “Kaiting Cheng” is also listed as a professor at the Guangzhou Medical University on a post from Hebei Normal University advertising a guest lecture by him on April 6, 2023.
His name appears on a scientific
paper related to the SARS-CoV-2 as well, with his affiliation listed with KingMed.
Mr. Cheng has been touring various cities in China and giving lectures, including on his work at the Winnipeg lab. A
talk he gave at an event in Chengdu City on July 1, 2023, was titled “Discovery of the Neuronal Antibody: Migration and taking lessons from a Canadian laboratory.”
The RCMP has said it is currently investigating Ms. Qiu and Mr. Cheng. No charges have been announced so far.
The Epoch Times contacted Ms. Qiu and Mr. Cheng for comment but didn’t hear back by publication time.
