Experts The Epoch Times spoke to identify various issues they see as shortcomings in Canada’s justice system and inter-agency collaborations. They say these problems make working on such cases more difficult in Canada compared to the United States and other peer countries.
Ms. Qiu and Mr. Cheng, a married couple, were escorted out of the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg on July 5, 2019, by the RCMP and fired from the lab in January 2021.
Documents related to their firing were released by the government in February after years of requests by MPs.
Talent Programs
The documents show that Ms. Qiu and Mr. Cheng had developed ties with numerous Chinese regime entities and military leaders tasked with researching biodefence and bioterrorism, and were involved in undisclosed research and collaboration in China including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The documents also reveal that they had given access to the Winnipeg lab computer network to unauthorized Chinese nationals and lied to investigators about their involvement with China. Ms. Qiu was found to have filed patents in China related to her field of research at the Winnipeg lab, raising intellectual property concerns.
The couple had also been involved with China’s various “talent programs,” which the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) says are focused on economic espionage.
The programs, operating under different names including the Thousand Talents Plan, give out generous payments and benefits to participants and are used by the Chinese regime to lure global talent to promote China’s scientific and economic development.
“Service [CSIS] information reveals that these programs aim to boost China’s national technological capabilities and may pose a serious threat to research institutions, including government research facilities, by incentivizing economic espionage and theft of intellectual property (IP),” says a June 30, 2020, document issued by CSIS regarding the case of Ms. Qiu.
The document adds that the programs don’t require participants to reside in China or give up their employment at non-Chinese regime institutions.
“[T]his facilitates dual income for researchers and ongoing access for China,” CSIS said.
According to CSIS, while Ms. Qiu was providing training at the Wuhan lab in 2017, she entered into an agreement to work at the lab for two months each year. The intelligence agency says WIV’s leadership saw her application to the Thousand Talents Plan as “very important for our institute [WIV]’s future development.”
CSIS suggests that this arrangement could be related to one of the tracks under the Thousand Talents Plan called “Innovative Talents (Short Term).” This category targets scientists returning or coming to China “for at least two months every year for at least three consecutive years with stable employers and clear work objectives.”
Participants in the Thousand Talents Plan are provided up to $1 million in research subsidies each year, CSIS says. More specifically at the WIV, CSIS says it has intelligence that the program offers a minimum of “1,500,000” (currency not indicated) and an annual salary of a minimum of “200,000” (currency not indicated).
“This agreement also indicates that the candidate must carry out work pertaining to the laboratory and team building, agreeing that all ownership of scientific research results obtained by the candidate belong to WIV while conducting research at its laboratory,” CSIS says.
Ms. Qiu also applied for other similar “talent programs” at the provincial and municipal level. This included programs at the Kunming Institute of Zoology and the Hebei Medical University.
The program at the Kunming Institute of Zoology provided around $10,000 in funding for a period of one to two weeks. CSIS says it is aware that Ms. Qiu applied to this program in 2019 after being asked to do so by the institute’s director. In addition to providing training, the worked involved “activities of actual academic exchanges, consultations, research guidance, exploration of talent fostering, and partnership of scientific research.”
The program at the Hebei Medical University involved Ms. Qiu working for two months per year at the university and continuing to lead the work offsite between July 2018 and June 2022. The funding under this program was $1,200,000, with compensation of $15,000 per month and an additional $30,000 per year for the offsite work. CSIS notes that the agreement was unfinalized at the time of its investigation.
The work involved assisting the university in “managing and developing their lab, building a team, and conducting innovative scientific research.”
CSIS says Mr. Cheng also applied for a talent program in 2013 while employed at the Winnipeg lab. The application was made under the Science and Technology Innovation Talent Program of Henan Province and requested $720,000 in funding for a project taking place between 2014 and 2018. The program required candidates to “passionately love the socialist motherland [People’s Republic of China].” CSIS didn’t confirm if Mr. Cheng completed the application.
Wuhan Talent Program
Under her agreement with the Thousand Talents Plan at the Wuhan lab, Ms. Qiu committed to building the Chinese regime’s “biosecurity platform for new and potent infectious disease research … in order to reach the top level domestically [within China] and achieve leading status internationally in the area of BSL4 [biosafety level 4] virus research,” says a description quoted by CSIS.In her application for the program, which was submitted by the WIV rather than by Ms. Qiu directly, the lab said her presence would improve their capability in “the areas of potent infectious disease and biosecurity” and that it would be “beneficial for our strengthening of international cooperation and improving the P4 virus research resources from abroad.”
CSIS says Ms. Qiu is referred to by the WIV as “the only highly experienced Chinese expert available internationally, who is still fighting on the front lines in a P4 [biosafety level 4] laboratory.” Her application with the Thousand Talents Plan also says that all intellectual property would belong to the WIV. This was despite there being other options to choose from on the application form, including her “current employer,” which would have been the Winnipeg lab, or “myself.”
CSIS says Ms. Qiu provided a training workshop at the WIV in October 2018 at WIV’s expense, but this activity was not declared to her employer at the Winnipeg lab. She is also recorded as having provided advice to WIV’s management on procuring lab materials. As well, she accepted an invitation to become a member of the International Advisory Committee for the Wuhan P4 lab.
In addition, Ms. Qiu was tasked with building “a team to start a series of research topics using China’s disease source as an advantage.” A senior technician at the WIV in 2018 was hired at the Winnipeg lab through the University of Manitoba, where Ms. Qiu was an adjunct professor. The technician was arranged to work under Ms. Qiu as a visiting researcher.
CSIS says the technician was also involved in Ms. Qiu’s Thousand Talent Program application. The agency notes that at one time in October 2018, the technician attempted to remove vials from the NML without authorization.
The agency says that in July 2018, Ms. Qiu discussed with WIV personnel the shipment of Ebola and Nipah virus strains from the Winnipeg lab, telling them that a formal agreement is not needed for the shipment, as “no one owns the IP [intellectual property],” and expressing “hope there is another way around.” The Winnipeg lab, under approval from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), would eventually ship 15 strains of the deadly viruses to the WIV on March 31, 2019.
Ms. Qiu would later sign up for two main projects that aimed to “cultivate national high-level biosafety talents” at the WIV lab as well, involving risky procedures.
One of the projects, which was to take place between 2019 and 2021, was meant to establish “mouse-adapted and guinea pig-adapted Ebola viruses (EBOV), with the aim of rescuing both adapted viruses through reverse genetics for study / production of mRNA vaccines.” Ms. Qiu and WIV’s vice-director were named as project designers and managers for the project, and the WIV senior technician, who was also working at NML at the time, was tasked with working on mRNA vaccine construction.
Project documents included a note that NML management shouldn’t be informed about the project, the reason being that WIV was in the process of requesting pathogen transfers from the Canadian lab.
CSIS notes that at least five of the strains shipped from the Winnipeg lab to Wuhan were referenced in this project, suggesting that the viruses shipped from Canada were meant for the project, without PHAC’s knowledge.
Ms. Qiu’s second main project, also set to take place between 2019 and 2021, involved using “reverse genetics in order to create synthetic virus strains,” which is used to “assess cross-species infection and pathogenic risks of bat filoviruses for future vaccine development purposes.” The project had a funding of $50,000 per year.
‘Untruthful’
An October 2020 PHAC internal report cites CSIS’s findings on Ms. Qiu’s involvement with the talent programs and adds that she was “untruthful in responding to allegations that she was committed, on several occasions, to applying to foreign talent programs.”The internal report notes that Ms. Qiu applied to the programs without PHAC’s authorization, emphasizing that the programs were “in areas that are military in nature.”
It also says that in her Thousand Talents Plan applications, she listed herself as a visiting professor at Hebei Medical University, and that in one of her research papers, she asked that her affiliation with the Institute of Military Veterinary be removed. The institute is a subsidiary of China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences.
In its assessment document, CSIS said that Ms. Qiu “intentionally transferred scientific knowledge and materials to China.”
As well, CSIS said Ms. Qiu advised a Chinese research student to apply for a visitor visa instead of a work permit to make it easier to enter Canada. Ms. Qiu denied having committed immigration fraud in interviews with investigators.
The Epoch Times has made attempts in the past to contact Ms. Qiu for comment, but didn’t hear back.
CSIS investigators made a similar assessment of Mr. Cheng’s lack of truthfulness as they did regarding his wife.
“The Service [CSIS] assesses that Mr. Cheng was not truthful in his security screening interviews. This includes his varying responses in Interview 2 as to the extent of his knowledge of PRC [People’s Republic of China]-sponsored talent programs,” CSIS said in an assessment document issued on July 7, 2020.
The RCMP told The Epoch Times that it’s currently conducting an investigation into the case of the fired scientists and that it has no further comment at this time.
“National Security criminal investigations are often complex, multijurisdictional, and resource intensive and can take several years to complete,” Sgt. Kim Chamberland said in an email.
Arrests in US for Lying About Ties to Talent Programs
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Harvard professor Mr. Lieber’s sentence was for “lying to federal authorities about his affiliation with People’s Republic of China’s Thousand Talents Plan and the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in Wuhan, China, as well as failing to report income he received from WUT.”The former chair of Harvard’s chemistry and chemical biology department was sentenced on April 26, 2023, to two days in prison, six months of home confinement, two years of supervised release, a fine of US$50,000, along with US$33,600 in restitution to the U.S. tax collection agency, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The prosecution had asked for a sentence of 90 days in prison and a US$150,000 fine.
Mr. Lieber’s convictions were based on the charges of making false statements to federal authorities, filing false income tax returns, and failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts with the IRS.
The professor worked as a “strategic scientist” at the Wuhan University of Technology as well as China’s Thousand Talents Plan from at least 2012 through 2015.
The U.S. Department of Defence (DoD) was one of the agencies that had sponsored Mr. Lieber’s work in the United States. The U.S. Attorney’s Office notes that during a 2018 interview with federal agents from DoD, Mr. Lieber “falsely stated that he had never been asked to participate in the Thousand Talents Plan.” He similarly caused Harvard in 2019 to falsely declare to a government agency that he had not been a participant in the Thousand Talents Plan.
Under his agreement with the talent program, Mr. Lieber was entitled to a salary of up to US$50,000 per month, living expenses of up to US$150,000, and a research fund of approximately US$1.5 million.
Other security cases have been reported in recent years in the United States involving the Thousand Talents Plan.
Difference Between Canada and US
Calvin Chrustie, a former RCMP senior operations officer involved in major transnational organized crime investigations, says there are a number of challenges that Canadian law enforcement and intelligence agencies face compared to their U.S. counterparts when it comes to such cases.“It essentially comes down to the legal framework in Canada, and the legal system that is not conducive to prosecuting cases that have sensitive information,” Mr. Chrustie, now a senior partner with the Critical Risk Team consulting firm, said in an interview.
Under Canada’s judicial system, he says, if a law enforcement agency such as the RCMP wants to use sensitive information as evidence in court, the judge would very likely compel the police force to reveal more information than it is normally prepared to, in order to protect its sources.
The situation becomes more challenging when the source of the intelligence is an agency of an allied country, a common occurrence in cases of foreign threats facing Canada.
“It’s even more complex when the information comes from foreign jurisdictions like the Five Eyes and our allies with differing legal systems that often are more conducive to countering foreign threats,” Mr. Chrustie says. “They become frustrated and sometimes avoid working with Canadians due to the non-friendly legal system that at times poses risks and threats to our partners’ operations and/or sources of information.”
For Phil Gurski, a veteran of CSIS and the Communications Security Establishment, the issue comes down to how seriously Canada takes national security concerns.
“The Americans take national security seriously, and we don’t. Right across the Canadian government, they have no idea what national security is all about. They don’t care,” Mr. Gurski told The Epoch Times.
The other challenge that makes for the greater ability to pursue prosecution in the United States and lack of prosecution in Canada, is that south of the border, the FBI is both a security service and a law enforcement agency, Mr. Gurski says.
“If the FBI is looking into somebody, the information they collect is gathered to what we call ‘an evidentiary standard,’ which means it can be used in court,” he said. “In Canada, what CSIS collects is intelligence, not evidence.”
Mr. Gurski says CSIS and the RCMP don’t do joint investigations because of the “intelligence versus evidence conundrum.” They will instead perform their investigations in parallel.
“The information is not shared between the two organizations because the RCMP can’t afford for the case to go to court, the defence finds out they are using a CSIS informant, and the court case completely falls apart because CSIS is not going to testify,” he said.
Mr. Gurski acknowledges that there are many individuals in Canadian universities and research centres who are part of China’s talent programs but have no apparent disciplinary action taken against them.
He says this speaks to Canadian authorities’ general ignorance regarding national security issues.
This is especially so when business ties are involved, with the Canadian government prioritizing that over critical national security concerns, he adds.
“Clearly, someone in the government thinks that trade relations with China are much more important than Chinese theft of our technology,” he says. “There’s no question that trade is important, but we have a government that, even when this suggestion is made that China is doing this, the prime minister says ‘you’re being racist for suggesting that.’”
CSIS on China’s Talent Programs
In a section providing more background on China’s talent programs in the released documents, CSIS says the Thousand Talents Plan is the most significant of China’s talent programs.“Its goal is to recruit ethnic Chinese experts from Western universities, research centers and private companies to boost China’s national capabilities in science and technology and to move China forward as an ‘innovative’ nation,” CSIS says.
Citing open-source information, it adds that the Thousand Talents Plan and other national-level talent programs were subsumed by China’s National High-end Foreign Experts Recruitment Plan (NHFERP) in 2019.
The main purpose of NHFERP is to “serve major national [PRC] strategic needs” with a particular focus on gaining foreign scientist support in “cultivating and developing strategic emerging industries.”
“Guidance from the PRC’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) indicates that the plan’s goals are to recruit foreign experts who undertake cutting-edge research, and those who have the potential to achieve major breakthroughs in key and core technological fields,” CSIS says.
“Biotechnology research and development is specifically noted in the NHFERP as an area which needs to be strengthened.”
CSIS also notes that China’s Five-Year Plan for 2016–2020, which was committed to implementing the Made in China 2025 plan, identifies biotechnology as a “strategic priority area for innovation and development”
“Through its talent recruitment programs, like the so-called Thousand Talents Program, the Chinese government tries to entice scientists to secretly bring our knowledge and innovation back to China,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a speech in July 2020.
“In one of the more galling and egregious aspects of the scheme, the conspirators actually patented in China the very manufacturing process they’d stolen, and then offered their victim American company a joint venture using its own stolen technology.”
Mr. Wray added that the FBI had seen a 1,300 percent increase in economic espionage cases linked to China over the past decade.
“The stakes could not be higher, and the potential economic harm to American businesses and the economy as a whole almost defies calculation,” he said.
The U.S. government in 2018 bolstered its investigation into the issue, launching the “China Initiative” to identify and prosecute individuals and groups suspected of engaging in commercial and economic espionage.
