Sen. Tom Cotton said that those who take money from the Chinese Communist Party should face criminal penalties.
The Arkansas Republican joined Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday when he said it’s “the act of accepting the Chinese money itself that should be criminalized.”
“The Chinese Communist Party continues its campaign of intellectual property theft and forced technology transfer,” he said. “It is past time for us to insist this stop. The Trump administration and the president have been doing that in various ways. I’ve got legislation that would take more steps, as well. So, for instance, criminalizing the payment of money to American professors and academics who are on the payroll of the Chinese Communist Party or their state-owned enterprises.”
In May, Cotton introduced a bill with Sen. Marsha Blackburn called the SECURE CAMPUS Act, which “would prohibit Chinese nationals from receiving visas to the United States for graduate or post-graduate studies in STEM fields.”
“Right now, you can only prosecute those cases for things like wire fraud or lying on federal documents,” Cotton said Wednesday. “It’s the act of accepting the Chinese money itself that should be criminalized. There are other steps we can take, as well, to stand up for American companies that shouldn’t have to transfer their intellectual property to Chinese partners simply as a condition of doing business with Chinese consumers.”
Earlier this summer, a grand jury indicted a Harvard professor for lying to government officials about his work with the Chinese government.
Former Harvard chemistry and chemical biology department chairman Charles Lieber was indicted on two counts of making false statements to federal investigators who were looking into money he received from China.
The Justice Department alleged that Lieber intentionally told officials in 2018 that he was never asked to participate in China’s Thousand Talents Program, which is used to recruit scientists from the United States with funding to contribute to scientific development in the country. However, charging documents show Lieber signed a contract as a Thousand Talents “high level foreign expert” in 2012 after representatives of the Wuhan University of Technology asked him to join.
Lieber faces “a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000” if convicted of lying to federal authorities. He is also facing additional charges for failing to report income from the Wuhan University of Technology to the Internal Revenue Service.
