A former employee of General Electric Power, Zheng Xiaoqing, has been sentenced to two years in prison for stealing confidential files from his employer using steganography—a technique that hides data within the binary code of a digital photograph. The stolen information, related to gas and steam turbine design, was sent to an accomplice in China and ultimately benefited the Chinese government, companies, and universities.
This case is part of a broader pattern of industrial espionage, as highlighted by a Department of Justice indictment. In November, Chinese national Xu Yanjun was sentenced to 20 years for plotting to steal trade secrets from US aviation and aerospace firms. The FBI's Alan Kohler Jr stated that China is targeting 'American ingenuity' to 'topple our status' as a global leader.
China's industrial espionage targets a wide range of sectors, including aerospace, aviation, pharmaceuticals, bioengineering, and nanotechnology. According to Ray Wang of Constellation Research, spies are 'everywhere,' with one former R&D head discovering that his most trusted colleague was on the payroll of the Chinese Communist Party.
The theft of trade secrets allows countries to 'leapfrog up global value chains relatively quickly,' said Nick Marro of the Economist Intelligence Unit. Former FBI director Christopher Wray warned that China aims to 'ransack' Western intellectual property to dominate key industries, a claim dismissed by China's then-foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian as 'smearing China' with a 'Cold War mentality.'
