5

US-Based Technology Transfer Organizations

China’s appetite for foreign technology is fed by a maze of organizations inside China and by a massive network of foreign-based venues. These foreign venues are managed in part by entities that report directly to the PRC government but in larger part by “non-political” expatriate groups, whose members’ sympathy for China and ability to profit by ceding technology have made them China’s de facto agents. The transfer mechanisms discussed in the preceding chapter could not operate without active support from these overseas organizations.

Although China’s technology network is worldwide, this chapter focuses on the United States, which the PRC regards as its main technology “partner.” We begin by examining five types of US-based venues – diplomatic offices, a facilitation company, an alleged NGO, an ethnic Chinese professional organization, and alumni associations – to demonstrate the variety of channels through which technology transfer happens. In the remainder of the chapter, we take a closer look at these Sino-American professional organizations. As is the case with PRC-based organizations, the number of groups in the US runs up quickly, so we will limit our survey to prominent organizations in three categories: Sino–US S&T associations, the California groups (as an example of geographic concentration), and groups focused on certain technology fields.

The commitment shared by these professional groups varies. Some are social networking associations formed chiefly to promote the careers and ethnic interests of their members. For them, technology transfer is a business opportunity, which their familiarity with Chinese culture positions them to exploit. Other groups regard handing China the latest American technology as an existential imperative and coordinate with their PRC counterparts to achieve this end while submitting to China’s formal guidance. Still others have members who hold official PRC posts and sit on Chinese S&T advisory panels. 

From US to China through “multiple channels”

China’s diplomatic missions to the United States are focused to an extraordinary degree on transferring US technology, both directly by promoting tech-oriented business and “cooperative” relationships, and indirectly by leveraging their relationships with US-based China advocacy groups. A third dimension – support for clandestine operations – is documented in Chapter 8 on traditional Chinese espionage. Each of China’s diplomatic offices in the US, including its embassy in Washington, DC, consulates in New York, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and its UN mission, have well-staffed S&T offices   to support these transactions.

According to a description posted to an official Chinese S&T exchange network,

The PRC embassy’s S&T office utilizes all advantages associated with being on the front line of Sino–US S&T cooperation and makes full use of its resources at every quarter to raise the level of service it provides to China’s domestic S&T plans in priority sectors and project development work, endeavoring to build an innovative nation.1

This description accurately captures the multi-faceted role played by the Washington embassy’s S&T office in technology transfer.

The office helps plan national events, where agreements are made between the US and PRC governments for cooperation in science and technology, and plays a direct role in the negotiations leading to these agreements. Its staff meet with high-tech US companies, universities, and S&T consortia in the United States, the heads of which are typically ethnic Chinese who have demonstrated commitment to China’s S&T development. It receives visitors from China’s tech transfer organizations, briefs them on the local situation, and arranges meetings or tours at US companies and technology centers.

Reps from the PRC embassy and consular S&T offices meet, in turn, with the officers of US-based China advocacy groups to communicate policy decisions, appeal for expanded support, and acquaint them with opportunities for S&T investments and other types of exchanges that involve travel to China to support favored projects. They facilitate the paperwork for individuals planning PRC S&T ventures in China or “return” visits, track their involvement, and arrange for them to meet appropriate persons while in China. Picnics, annual celebrations, and business meetings held by Sino-American S&T advocacy groups usually have someone from the S&T office in attendance along with other personnel registered to the embassy or consulate.

Here is a typical example of how the embassy’s mediation process works. In November 2006, its S&T counselor   and the head of the

Washington, DC-based “Center for US-China Technology Innovation and Development”(UCTID, see below) presided over a seminar attended by four major DC area China advocacy groups – the UCTID, the Overseas Chinese-American Entrepreneurs Association  , the CAST

Network Society (a group within CAST-USA), and the China Society 

  – at George Mason’s Fairfax Innovation Center to introduce technology transfer projects plugged by a Shandong-based “information technology outsourcing” company.2 Other participants included the embassy’s S&T Ministerial Counselor Jin Ju,3 another member of the S&T office who specializes in IT, and the owner of a large IT service company in the I-270 technology corridor.4 Speeches given by embassy officials met with “enthusiastic response” and the event ended with an agreement to pursue transfer activities with the Shandong firm.5

The embassy’s S&T office also sends delegations of personnel from US companies in particular technology sectors (e.g., pharmaceuticals, software) to China under formal and informal PRC state auspices to market their technology in China or engage in ventures that result in technology transfer. It also facilitates meetings for S&T delegations traveling from China. For example, in June 2006 a nine-person group from the PRC’s Ministry of Science and Technology and several technical universities seeking automotive technology from the United States were greeted by S&T ministerial counselor Jin Ju and escorted by his subordinate, the embassy’s S&T counselor, to various US sites.

Beyond the practical, hands-on support they render, China’s S&T officers in the United States engage in public discourse to promote expanded US– China technology trade and rally sentiment against “obstacles”   the US government places in the way of “free scientific exchange.”

For example, in 2002, the embassy’s S&T counselor met a China science delegation headed by MOST that came to celebrate the opening of the University of Maryland’s “Zhongguancun National Innovation Model Park” (or Z-park), China’s first such facility abroad.6 At a seminar to mark the event, the counselor complained about “political roadblocks” Congress puts in the way of technology exports to China. Two years later, the PRC counselor conveyed to a CAST-USA assembly his country’s displeasure with technology export restrictions and “political pressure.”7

S&T officers assigned to these diplomatic posts rotate regularly through other tech transfer jobs in China and abroad, bringing experience to the task. The director of the China Association for International Science and Technology Cooperation did a three-year stint as S&T counselor and S&T minister at the Washington embassy. His prior service included tours of PRC embassies in Europe. Addresses given at ceremonies to welcome incoming science counselors and honor the outgoing incumbent typically cite the officers’ scientific background and diplomatic skills.

The role these officers play in technology acquisition may be gauged in part by their interactions with expatriate scientists. Serious efforts to involve Chinese scientists in the US in PRC S&T projects began in the mid1990s, with the New York consulate’s formation of an overseas experts committee   to “help overseas students realize their hopes of serving the country” and to “use the intellect of ethnic Chinese experts abroad to contribute planning and strategy for the enactment of important domestic scientific and technology programs.”8 By 1997 the consulate had:

[M]obilized community organizations with a relatively [high] concentration of overseas ethnic Chinese experts, such as the Chinese Association for Science and Technology USA, the North American Chinese Association of Science and Technology, the Chinese Finance Society, the

Chinese Association for Science and Business, the Association of Chinese Scientists and

Engineers USA, and the Silicon Valley Chinese Engineers Association, and organized in the United States 100 high-level ethnic Chinese scholars in all fields to carry out investigations and research on the future direction of China’s S&T development and on related policies, who submitted the four volume “Recommendations for the Development of Chinese Science and Technology” in which coalesced the wisdom of the ethnic Chinese scholars and their sincere thought to repay their native country.9

Included were eight topics covering the major high-tech disciplines marked for transfer. At the same time, “an effective model was sought for overseas scholars to serve their [native] country.” In November of that year a MOST delegation:

arrived in Canada and the United States and interviewed more than 120 ethnic Chinese scientists and the organizations to which they belong. These ethnic Chinese scientists offered their valuable opinions and recommendations on various levels such as developmental trends in worldwide basic research and on China’s basic research development strategies, choice of priority areas, and international cooperation, planning and administration of basic research.10

Both sides agreed that China’s practice of sending groups to solicit the opinions of Chinese scholars abroad on S&T policy issues was a positive development – a “scientific and democratic means of determining national policy.” The US-based scholars “hoped through the combined efforts of those in China and abroad China would be able to regularize and systematize this kind of model and build a formal, normalized pathway and mechanism for exchanges with China’s science policymakers.”11

This pattern of cooperation with Sino-American S&T groups has continued through to the present. For example, in May 2007, the New York Consul-General reported to the annual CAST-USA gathering that China’s policy of “bringing in, digesting, absorbing and recreating”  foreign science and technology has made “continuous breakthroughs.” The C-G asked the Chinese-American scientists there to continue “serving China through various means.”12 A delegation from the PRC’s State

Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs subsequently visited the consulate to express thanks for its support in recruiting S&T talent. Both sides reportedly “carried out deep discussions on recruitment efforts inside the US.”13

Similar efforts are pursued at China’s other diplomatic facilities in the US, which have carved out areas of responsibility throughout the 50 states and overseas territories. In April 2008, while US auto firms were fighting for their survival, the PRC’s Chicago S&T counselor addressed the American Association of Chinese Scientists and Engineers in Detroit on China’s need for advanced automotive technology. The head of a major PRC auto company was there helpfully to explain “opportunities and challenges facing China’s automotive industry.”14 Ten months later at a Lunar New Year feast the counselor enjoined the same group “to make greater contributions to the stable and healthy development of Sino–US relations.”

The power which China’s diplomatic offices have over these USregistered S&T organizations is considerable, as indicated by the number of groups they can bring under their umbrella. In November 2007, the Los Angeles consul hosted a banquet for 30 representatives of 11 southern California S&T professional groups. He thanked them for their contributions to Sino–American S&T cooperation and exchange and expressed the consulate’s desire to continue providing these groups with support.15 Then, in May 2008, the LA consulate’s S&T counselor gathered 220 members of local Chinese S&T groups for a meeting with a “policy advising and reporting group” sent by the PRC State Council’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and MOST’s Department of International S&T Cooperation, held at the OCAO’s own conference center in LA. The OCAO group was led by Zhang Jianqing, head of the Department 4 technology transfer unit, who prior to this worked in the NYC consulate and Washington embassy. The S&T counselor described the attendees as people who live abroad but whose “hearts and minds belong to China”  16 Dong Jianlong, another Department 4 officer formerly employed at the LA consulate, explained to the expatriate scientists “in detail” how to participate in China’s S&T development.17

Consular S&T officers advise PRC delegations how to leverage relationships with these groups during their stay in the United States and they broker agreements between the visitors and US centers of technical excellence. They also maintain ties with the ethnic Chinese owners of hightech companies. For example, in February 2009, a delegation from the San Francisco consulate called on a local biotech firm, where they were “warmly received” by the Chinese CEO and staff. Both sides exchanged views on China’s biotech development and the support rendered by USbased experts.18 News items posted to the LA and SF consulates’ websites describe frequent visits by the S&T counselors to California high-tech companies.

These same websites offer a host of information to those contemplating technology ventures, including a summary of China’s official S&T programs, an introduction to China’s overall plan for international S&T cooperation, links to PRC S&T-oriented websites, Chinese S&T policy documents, information on China’s high-tech zones, and useful contacts.

There are news items posted on S&T “exchange” events in China, and S&T

“communiqués”   from PRC ministries and other official organizations announcing opportunities to support Chinese S&T projects, both general and specific. Most of this information is in Chinese. Readers are enjoined to “use multiple means to develop multi-channel, multi-layer, all-round international cooperation and exchange” and contribute research of a “practical nature”  .19

Besides its diplomatic missions in the United States, the Chinese government facilitates tech transfer through other state organizations established directly on US soil. SAFEA’s New York office is one example. Another is Triway Enterprise, Inc.  , an “external training institute” set up under SAFEA’s auspices in Falls Church, VA with branches in Beijing and Nanjing. The company “since 1993 has been putting its energy into promoting bilateral exchange and cooperation between China and the US in the fields of S&T, culture, education and management with great success.”20 It claims to have an excellent reputation arranging travel to the US for “training and inspection” and in “international exchange services.”

Triway also hosts “talented persons exchange conferences” for recruiters from Shanghai, Guangzhou, and elsewhere in China at venues in New York, DC, Chicago, the west coast, and Toronto. In 2008 Triway organized for a Changzhou delegation “talks and exchanges” with some 150 local Chinese scholars, overseas students, and professional persons in Los Angeles. The event was sponsored by Changzhou’s municipal personnel office and by SAFEA. In 2009 it arranged a conference in New York City for a Guangdong headhunting team sent by the Ministry of Personnel and SAFEA, and it helped run CAST-USA’s seventeenth annual meeting in Washington, DC. Triway boasts “a one-stop, fully-integrated solution” to technology transfer that includes handling “complex travel arrangements” and providing “top-quality translators.”21

As a measure of the company’s success, Triway was hired in October

2006 by the Shanghai Association for the International Exchange of

Personnel   – an alleged NGO and part of the China Association for the International Exchange of Personnel, which is a SAFEA front organization – to help establish a liaison office in Washington, DC. The office links up east coast Chinese S&T personnel with the appropriate units in Shanghai and has participated in meetings run by area Chinese professional groups.

Nominal “non-governmental” offices such as this provide PRC state and provincial units with direct access to US S&T talent while insulating the latter from the stigma of supporting a foreign state whose goals are often inimical to US interests. Besides its DC foothold, SAIEP has an office in Sunnyvale, CA as part of a worldwide network that includes Toronto, London, Paris, Hannover, Osaka, and Sydney. The west coast unit was established with help from the Silicon Valley Chinese Engineers Association (see below), the largest Chinese professional group in the valley, and is run by former SCEA director and president June Chu.22 Shanghai’s decision to locate an office in Silicon Valley is explained on the SAIEP website: “The US is the most developed country in the world. It has at the same time the highest population of top talent.”23

SAIEP California’s main partner, besides SCEA, is the Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association, another California Chinese-American group

(see below).24 Some idea of the scale of SAIEP’s operation is evident in its

“10,000 Overseas Scholars Convergence Program”  ,25 which aims at raising the level of Shanghai’s S&T talent and “breaking conceptual restraints on using overseas scholars.” The program boasts “new methods” that involve analyzing the city’s talent pool, determining its shortcomings, and using foreign experts to fill posts “at all levels of Party and government, institutes of higher learning, scientific research institutes, medical facilities, state-owned large and medium-sized businesses, and other associated facilities.”26

Straddling the line between PRC organizations in the US and US-based China advocacy groups is the Chinese Association for Science and Technology, USA  , a “non-political” professional association founded in New York City in 1992, whose 11 chapters span 30 states. Although the organization does not claim direct affiliation with its PRC namesake, the China Association for Science and Technology  , CAST-USA lists CAST China as one of its two “partners” (the other is the MOE’s China Education and Research Network).27 The PRC connection is further spelled out in CAST-USA’s charter, where it claims to “serve as a ‘bridge’ between the United States and China for both personnel and information exchanges, and for cooperation in science and technology, economics, trade and other areas.”28

The organization goes on to list under its “activities” the following:

To establish cooperative relations with American corporations, enterprises, institutions and organizations, to create favorable conditions and environment for cooperation between the American and Chinese people in seeking funds, market development, technology transfer and investment opportunities between the United States and China.29

A critical reader might ask why this “US” organization emphasizes a need for relations with US organizations. In apposition to what? We also note in the last phrase the penultimate position of “technology transfer,” the preferred spot for key elements in a Chinese list and what CAST-USA is all about. Then there is the US organization’s Chinese name, which differs from the PRC organization’s name by two characters only –   or “residing in America.” But these are minor points, as a survey of CASTUSA’s literature demonstrates its orientation and the beneficiary of its activities.

CAST-USA lists among its “advisors” current and former members of the Chinese Academy of Science and Chinese Academy of Engineering, the PRC’s highest scientific bodies. Also named are former Minister of Science and Technology Zhu Lilan, members of China’s National Natural Science Foundation, members of China’s National People’s Congress and National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and professors at PRC universities.30 These advisors play active roles in the US organization’s proceedings. For example, the CAS president led off the annual meeting in 2005 with an address entitled “Envoys of S&T Cooperation, Bridge for Sino–American Friendship.” A specialist in systems control also from CAS addressed the same gathering with a tribute to Qian Xuesen – father of China’s strategic missile force (see Chapter 1), outspoken advocate of US technology transfer and the beacon behind China’s foreign S&T open source collection program–whom he noted used to study at nearby Cal Tech.31

Many CAST-USA members who live in the US occupy PRC positions. An example is Professor Chao Xiuli of the North Carolina chapter. Chao is tenured at Qinghua University and a member of CAS’s International Research Team on Complex Systems. He has served as adjunct professor in the CAS Graduate School since 2002, at Dalian University of Technology, and as a distinguished professor at CAS’s Academy of Mathematics and System Sciences.32 He won the Outstanding Overseas Young Scientist Award from China’s NNSF, another outstanding scientist award from CAS, and has participated directly in PRC national S&T planning.33

The usual complement of Chinese officials attends CAST-USA’s business meetings and social events. PRC Consul General Zhong Jianhua opened CAST-USA’s 2004 convention and ended it with a banquet at his residence.

China S&T Counselor Li Wuqiang spoke at the 2007 national convention in New York and S&T Counselor Mao Zhongying began the regional NYC meeting in 2008. On Double Ten Day (October 10, a Chinese national holiday) in 2007, CAST-USA’s New York chapter met under the S&T attaché’s auspices with officials from China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, OCAO’s Department 4, and two Shanghai industrial groups to discuss founding S&T-oriented businesses in China.34

Besides interacting with PRC delegations to the United States, CASTUSA sends missions to China, such as an annual visit during “Returning Overseas Scholars Innovation Week,” when the CAST-USA team meets with officials from MOST, academics from CAS and CAE, financial sponsors, and managers of China’s “pioneering parks” to line up cooperative projects. CAST-USA also backed a 2008 “Return Visit to China,” which met with an OCAO team in Wuhan for a series of activities aimed at “combining the technologies provided by overseas Chinese with local funding for mutual benefit.” The group had “broad contacts and exchanges with relevant domestic units and personnel,” and direct exchanges with OCAO and local government leaders.35

CAST-USA also plays a prominent role in the Guangzhou OCS tech transfer conventions. At the seventh annual event in 2004, CAST-USA sent a 50-person delegation, which brought to China “over 40 projects,” more than any other foreign delegation.36 While at the convention, it joined up with the PRC organizing committee to host the first “High-level Forum on a

Strategy to Strengthen China through Knowledge”   and to pass a declaration of support for China’s efforts to usher in high-tech industry. The proposal – conceived, drafted, and presented by CAST-USA – aimed at positioning China among the world’s top seven countries in innovation by 2010. A report describing it began by affirming “competition between countries in the 21st century is a competition in knowledge.”37 The irony of helping China prevail in a competition against the country in which one lives seems to have gone unnoticed.

On top of its regional chapters CAST-USA has eight disciplinary subcommittees specializing in information engineering, networking, ecommerce, chemistry and chemical engineering, biology, medicine, finance, and law.38 One of them is the “CAST Network Society”   founded in 2000. The group organizes an annual Chinese-American Networking Symposium, alternately held in the US and China, where CAST experts give presentations, run panels, and engage their PRC counterparts in technical break-out sessions.39 It has close ties with Beijing’s Zhongguancun Science Park and the University of Maryland, which jointly sponsor the CANS event.

Chinese alumni associations are another venue which Beijing uses to promote its technology transfer agenda. Degree holders from Chinese colleges living abroad who belong to these associations are, from China’s perspective, a self-selected talent pool with the knowledge and motivation to contribute to China’s technical modernization. They also constitute a ready-made support base inside the host country with concentrations of personnel in high-tech corridors.

The Shanghai Jiaotong University Alumni Association, for example, has chapters in Houston, Michigan, North Carolina, Washington, DC, Boston, New York, Florida, New England, Pittsburg, and Texas.40 The Nanjing University Alumni Association with some 200,000 US members has branches in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, North Carolina, and Philadelphia. Technology transfer masquerading as scientific exchanges is written into their bylaws and charters.41 These “exchanges” typically take the form of the PRC government informing the alumni associations of China’s technology needs, and the US-based alumni traveling to China to service those needs.

For example, in June 2007 the NUAA sent a US delegation to Nanjing under the provincial government’s auspices to discuss technology transfer opportunities with PRC companies. Some 23 presentations, cleared with the host beforehand, were given by the delegation on finance, management, bio-pharmaceuticals, materials, software, and IT. Their presentations were made simultaneously in three “fully packed” conference rooms. During the seven-day event, the US-based alumni visited high-tech industrial parks in Nanjing, Changzhou, Wuxi, and Suzhou, which were “well prepared” for their arrival.42

In 2009, China’s OCAO “formally commissioned”  the NUAA to “convene”   40 Chinese-American experts in biotechnology, as part of a 100-person draft required by a new “Plan for Overseas Talented Persons to Render Service to China.” The OCAO asked specifically for ethnic Chinese who had worked three years or longer overseas and could bring to China “practical items” developed with their own IPR. In a separate pitch for a project in Hainan, the OCAO asked the association to provide “high-level talented persons with academic attainments in the United States, definite business achievements, and specific ideas for cooperative ventures” in “medicine, electronics, management, finance, high-technology, computers and autos.”43

Chinese alumni associations from both sides of the Taiwan Straits can put aside political differences for their common interests vis-à-vis the nonChinese world. The Tsinghua Alumni Association of Northern California plays “a key role in the research, development and incubation of high-tech industry in both mainland China and Taiwan.”44 Another example is the Chiao-Tung University Alumni Association in America,45 which enrolls alumni from all five Jiaotong universities, China and Taiwan alike.

Chinese-American S&T associations — general

Complementing the technology outreach organizations in China and PRC venues operating within the United States itself are well over 100 USregistered China advocacy groups that aim directly at technology transfer or achieve this as a consequence of their organizational structure. While some of these groups are open to professionals of any ethnicity, most are made up exclusively of overseas Chinese – US citizens, green card holders, H-1B visa workers, and graduate students – whose interests coincide with those of their ancestral country.

Although there is no a priori reason for Chinese-American S&T associations to identify with China, a sovereign foreign state, in practice this is nearly always so given the advantages that accrue to members who can overcome linguistic and other obstacles to provide their know-how to China. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, their common heritage predisposes them to focus on doing what they can do best. This internal dynamic is exploited by China, which courts these associations and steers their activities using a mix of psychological pressure, political control, and financial incentives. The Sino-US organizations in turn become credible through their interactions with China and the access they provide to their members.

Evidence of a China bias on the part of these S&T groups is found in their charters, activities, and web postings – which we shall explore below – and in the spirit that pervades their literature. For example, among the dozens of S&T associations examined by the authors, not one failed to solicit money for the 2008 Sichuan earthquake relief – a project that has nothing to do with S&T and everything to do with helping China. By contrast, nowhere did we find concern expressed about contributing technology to a foreign country whose position on issues is often antagonistic to that of the US. The assumption, when it is made at all, is what’s good for China is good for everyone.

Let us look at these organizations in detail, beginning with the North

American Chinese Scholars International Exchange Center   in McLean, VA,46 one of nine generic SinoAmerican S&T associations we will cover. According to its website, NAIEC is:

an independent, non-profit institution registered in the United States and headquartered in suburban Washington DC. It is led by a group of Chinese-American individuals who have earned doctorates in social sciences, biological sciences, information technologies, and management in the United States and have been highly successful in their respective fields. They have led Chinese-American professional and community organizations/institutions for years while maintaining broad ties both in the United States and in China.47

NAIEC achieved prominence during 2000 to 2002 through a series of “overseas Chinese scholar talented persons exchange meetings” held in DC and other US and Canadian cities. Supported by the PRC embassy in Washington, the meetings were joined by representatives from various

Chinese provinces and cities and by overseas Chinese scholars and ethnic Chinese living abroad. The meetings were considered “enormous successes.”48 The first event organized in 2000 with help from the Union of Chinese American Professional Associations (see below) and alumni from technical universities was attended by some 70 PRC delegates and 750 US and Canadian OCS. A second session in 200149 was billed as giving Chinese scientists in the US a “historical opportunity” to support China’s competitiveness as it entered the WTO.50 Statistics for the 2001 event were 100 PRC and 2,450 resident attendees. The meetings “emphasized bridgebuilding and practical results.” Some 20 percent of the projects discussed at the meeting were put into effect.51

By the third year these meetings had become “a famous platform and conveyor belt linking overseas Chinese scholars and the ancestral mainland.” The October 2002 session attracted 73 US-based OSC expert associations and several PRC-based transfer organizations including the OCAO, the Jiangsu branch of SAFEA, and that province’s personnel office. Delegates from 17 Jiangsu cities attended to conduct “project discussions on high-tech items.”52 For this event, NAIEC consulted a “database of talented personnel” to select US-based scholars whose skills matched the “concrete personnel needs . . . of PRC industrial firms and government institutes.”53 Selectees performed various “services” in China, including evaluating PRC state projects.54

Illustrating its close links with official PRC bodies, NAIEC was invited in 2003 by Zhejiang Province’s Expert and Overseas Chinese Scholar Service Center, with backing from two offices in the Ministry of Personnel, to propose “technical cooperation and exchange projects.” The group asked its US members to submit detailed forms describing their projects in advance so that appropriate PRC government units and companies could be lined up. Applicants who passed online screening were invited to China for “deeper discussions.”55 This requirement to have tech transfer ideas vetted in China beforehand has become de rigueur and was invoked by NAIEC again in 2008 in a solicitation for projects in China’s coastal cities and western regions.56

NAIEC’s partner in the annual DC “exchange” meetings is the Union of

Chinese American Professional Organizations  , a non-profit group founded in 1998 that “coordinates 28 Chinese American professional organizations in the Washington area.”57 UCAPO’s claimed following of 20,000 is based on the combined membership of these participating organizations; its own staff numbers about half a dozen. Most member groups are centered on particular technologies or professions with the balance made up of friendship associations and groups promoting politics and culture. Those with an S&T orientation are listed below.58

CAST/DC Chapter 

CAST/Network Society 

Chinese Biopharmaceutical Association, USA  

National Society of Medical Scientists—Chinese-American

Association  

North American China Overseas Transportation Association 

 

Overseas Chinese-American Entrepreneurs Association at DC 

Pharmaceutics Association of Chinese-American Scientists 

 

US-China Industry & Commerce Association  

The term “professional” is not used here loosely. Some 95 percent of the participating organizations’ members have advanced degrees.59 Many have become “the top experts in their fields or senior officials in government agencies.”60 UCAPO’s role is to guide interaction between the groups, support their members’ careers, lobby for PRC national interests (“promote understanding and cooperation between China and the US”), and improve relations between Chinese and “other ethnic groups” in the US.61 The Shanghai chapter of the PRC State Council’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, with which UCAPO is closely affiliated, states that one of UCAPO’s purposes is to “integrate technology resources” between China and the US, and combine “the intellectual resources of US-based expert personages” with the “market resources” of China.62

UCAPO’s member groups have sponsored “nearly 100 technological and trading delegations to visit China and participated in hi-tech fairs and professional forums and workshops.”63 These are in addition to projects carried out in the United States. According to the Shanghai OCAO, more than 100 UCAPO members “relocated their technological enterprises” to China. Updated information posted to the UCAPO site in 2009 puts that figure at 300.

A third major DC-area technology transfer organization is the Center for

US-China Technology Innovation and Development , a

“research and consulting company” founded in 2006 by River Doan , a 1990s immigrant to the US who managed high-tech projects in China for CAS and MOST. Dr. Doan now regards himself as “a friend of US-China governmental, academic and industrial communities involved in international technology transfer, innovation, and outsourcing.”64 His eightperson management team is staffed entirely by Chinese-Americans. They are assisted by an advisory committee of 12 people, including the PRC embassy’s S&T counselor, deans of prominent PRC science and engineering universities, officers of Chinese technical conglomerates, a former MOST official, and four George Mason University professors.65

This core of officers acts through “a huge network of specialists” in China and the US to provide “integrative service” for technology transfer and talent exchange. These specialists:

conduct research in emerging technologies and business opportunities, innovation methodology and development strategies; they conduct technology and innovation policy study; provide evaluation and risk analysis for technology investment; and provide assistance and training programs for emerging businesses and innovative start-ups.66

In plain terms, UCTID and its affiliates spot new US technology, find PRC customers for it, determine how to pass the technology to China in a costeffective way, and help get the project off the ground. It works at both ends of the business, encouraging US-based Chinese entrepreneurs to market their technology in China and helping PRC state and corporate equities find foreign talent. To achieve this, UCTID networks with other Sino-American S&T groups such as CAST, the Overseas Chinese-American Entrepreneurs Association, and the Chinese Biopharmaceutical Association USA, directly or under consular auspices.

For elite customers UCTID offers membership in a “Summit Club”    where one can meet successful “executives, officers, scholars, domain experts, and senior professionals” united by their “interest in international cooperation between the USA and China.”67

New York City, besides being host to the founding CAST-USA chapter, is also home to the Chinese Association for Science and Business   , a Sino-American advocacy group founded in 1997.

Current membership is about 1,000 according to CASB, or over 2,000 according to the Chinese consulate.68 Although CASB emphasizes its “uniqueness,” the organization typifies US-based Chinese S&T associations in most respects:

  it is made up entirely of Chinese with careers in S&T and management;

  it has members who hold top posts in business, government and academia;

it supports its members' professional development;

it promotes high-tech "exchanges" with China through a global network;

it organizes and participates in tech transfer conferences in China; it sends delegations to China to engage in transfer-related activities; it co-sponsors conferences in the US with delegations from China; it maintains close ties with PRC diplomats stationed in the US; it works with local PRC governments to help OCS set up high-tech businesses.

Here is part of a recent posting to the CASB website, the essence of which may be found on any of the dozens of Sino-American tech transfer sites we examined.

It is my great pleasure to report to you our CASB delegation’s successful visit to Beijing and Tianjin in April [2009] in response to the Chinese Government’s “Thousand Talents” program.

CASB members were excited at the Chinese Government’s announcement of the new program to hire 1,000 specialists from overseas, and they have responded enthusiastically. As many accomplished members intended to return to China together to serve the motherland under this program, we organized a delegation which visited Beijing and Tianjin from April 15 to 21. We received a very warm welcome and high-level reception.69

The posting went on to describe meetings with high PRC officials in the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the OCAO, Tianjin’s mayor, two Communist Party politburo members, MOST officials, and the heads of a high-tech industrial zone in Tianjin, to whom they presented their slate of projects.70 A follow-up visit, presumably to discuss implementation, was being scheduled.

Not to be confused with CAST-USA  described earlier in the chapter is the North America Chinese Association of Science and Technology  , a Chinese S&T advocacy group that grew out of Boston and now claims 3,000 members in 14 US chapters. NACAST was founded in 1993 by MIT’s Liu Yaping  under the guidance  of China’s State Science and Technology Commission (predecessor to MOST) and the Chinese consulate in New York.71 Liu, a strong believer in the “mutual benefits” of Sino–US technical cooperation, reportedly “advocates relying on talented persons overseas to directly infuse the world’s first-rate technology” into China.72

NACAST’s stated goal is to promote and expedite Sino–US cooperation and exchange in S&T. To achieve this, it:

  serves as liaison between Chinese and US research facilities, universities, companies, and related institutions;

  arranges visits, lectures and short periods of work in China for members who have demonstrated success in their careers (emphasis added); helps PRC scholars and entrepreneurs come to America for training; builds regular channels for Sino—US two-way exchanges.73

More than 85 percent of NACAST’s members have PhDs from top US universities and “have or are acquiring important technologies and management positions.”74 Its directors hail from research facilities at Bristol-Meyers, Chrysler, Exxon, Hughes, Lucent, Microsoft, Rockwell, Siemens, United Technologies, and Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Yale universities. Each year NACAST’s management organizes trips to China by overseas scholars from these and other US facilities to carry out exchanges and “perform services.” According to the OCAO, the organization lobbies on China’s behalf not just for technology transfer but for political matters as well.75

The southern states also have vigorous China S&T advocacy groups, beginning with Houston’s Chinese Association of Professionals in Science and Technology  , another non-profit, “non-political” group founded in the early 1990s. CAPST’s generic missions are “to facilitate and promote scientific, cultural and economic exchanges between China and the United States” and support their members’ career advancement through networking.76 Its 500 members, chiefly scientists, engineers, and other professionals, “hold various important positions in private companies, universities and research institutions.” Some have dual appointments at US and PRC technical universities. Members are split functionally into six divisions for computing, energy, chemistry, medicine, law, and business management.

CAPST works with PRC technology transfer organizations such as OCAO, SAFEA, and MOST to send specialists to China, receive delegations from China and organize technology “exchange” conferences in both countries. Here are examples of its PRC interactions:77

  In February 2008 CAST (China)'s International Department arrived in

Houston to discuss with CAPST leaders its Overseas Knowledge Plan 

 . Launched in 2004, the Plan makes use of CAST's function as a bridge between China and overseas Chinese S&T groups to stimulate scientists and engineers abroad "to contribute their intellect and strength" to China's economic development and "scientific innovation."

  Three months later, CAPST hosted five PRC delegates, including the heads of OCAO's S&T Office and MOST's Department of

International S&T Cooperation, for an "advisory readout of China's innovation policies." Among the topics discussed were how to "better utilize OCS' knowledge and intellectual property to serve China." CAPST’s liaisons with PRC diplomatic representatives in the US are commonplace. The reader is invited to examine CAPST’s quarterly newsletter   for numerous examples. Here is one from the China Talents website:

  A North American OCS Exchange Meeting opened in Houston in 2006 with support from CAPST, Chinese alumni groups, the consulate in Houston, and various PRC delegations that brought nearly 2,000 work opportunities. Many of the work units offered high salaries to attract the overseas talent to China. The meeting was "strongly coordinated"   by the PRC embassy, enjoyed enthusiastic support from the PRC government at all levels, and had tremendous impact. The Houston C-G predicted China technology scouts would “return fully loaded”   and, indeed, “several hundred high-tech projects” found their way to China.78

Every year the Houston C-G delivers the keynote speech at CAPST’s annual meeting. The 2007 event, a typical affair, was also attended by the consulate’s S&T team and by representatives from the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Unification.79 Consul Qiao Hong congratulated CAPST “for 15 years of accomplishments in bringing together local ethnic Chinese specialists and promoting Sino-US bilateral cooperation and exchanges in S&T, education, specialized technology and personnel.” She thanked CAPST for acting as a bridge for Sino–US technical exchanges and for “dedication in serving China.”80

In 1996 CAPST put together a Federation of Associations of Chinese

Professionals in Southern USA  , an umbrella organization representing 22 Sino-US advocacy groups in the south, including CAPST, which has become the Atlanta-based regional center for Sino-American professionals in 11 southern states. FACPSU claims thousands of members, including scientists, engineers, and other types of experts, 90 percent of whom have graduate degrees.

The Federation’s goals are to foster interaction between members and “promote exchange and cooperation between overseas Chinese professional organizations and expert personnel in the southern region of the United States and China81 in science and technology, economics, and culture, becoming a bridge for S&T cooperation between China and the US.” It offers an “environment and opportunities” for members to participate in Sino–US S&T exchanges. Its advisory center, established in 2004, acts as an executive mechanism to further strengthen S&T cooperation and exchange with China. FACPSU demonstrates its legitimacy as a coordinating body by citing statements of approval from official PRC organizations, such as the following:

Many PRC government and civilian organizations have fully approved of the FACPSU and established long-term, stable relationships with it, including CAST, OCAO, SAFEA, CAS, the National Natural Science Foundation, the Western Returned Scholars Association, MOST and other provincial and municipal departments, universities and colleges.82

A second major group – besides CAPST – under the FACPSU umbrella is the Association of Chinese Professionals   in Atlanta. The ACP makes explicit in its charter an inference we drew earlier in this chapter about the motivation of Chinese-Americans who join these advocacy groups, namely the opportunity to benefit personally from their “natural connections with China.”83 Another interesting sideline is a reference by its president in 2007 to building a “talent database” for the group to act “as a professional exchange platform.” Are the persons in the database all aware of this? Who paid for the project and to whom are the data given?

ACP consorts with the usual PRC players. In 2005 it organized a SinoUS S&T and talented persons study group under FACPSU auspices in cooperation with CAST (China) and the China Association for the International Exchange of Personnel (SAFEA’s front group). In 2006, ACP hosted an S&T delegation sent by Sichuan provincial authorities and the regional OCAO aimed at “linking up the fruits of foreign new and high technology with domestic PRC companies and research institutes.” In 2007 it sponsored trips to Returning Overseas Scholars Innovation Week in Beijing and the Guangdong Convention of Overseas Scholars. Its annual gathering in 2008 was joined by the Houston C-G and officers from CAIEP.84

In the Midwest, Sino-US talent is represented by the Association of

Chinese Scientists and Engineers  , an organization that duplicates in all particulars the patterns noted for S&T advocacy groups above. ACSE was founded in 1992 by Chinese professionals as a non-political non-profit group headquartered in Chicago.85 It now has 12 chapters throughout the US and another 12 affiliated professional societies.86 Some 90 percent of its 1,500 members boast graduate degrees.87 Its charter contains the usual statements about supporting its members’ career development, promoting S&T “exchange” with China, and serving as a “bridge for cooperation between the two nations.”

ACSE’s China credentials are impeccable. Its honorary members include the vice-director of the National Political Consultative Conference, heads of the CAS and CAE, current State Council members, and a former MOST director. The Chicago consul and MOST officials often address its meetings. PRC president Jiang Zemin personally received ACSE international exchange and cooperation delegations to China in 1996 and 1998. Its members frequent the yearly Guangzhou exchange convention and Dalian’s annual Innovation Week.88

A passage in the Chinese language section of its website describes the group’s “China–US exchanges and activities in service to China”  :

The association has established relations with the relevant PRC ministries and committees, CAS, CAE, and provincial and municipal entities in all places. It organizes biannual exchange visits to China, entertains Chinese S&T delegations to the United States, and facilitates visits of American companies, organizations and personnel to China.

ACSE has supported transfer initiatives in Suzhou Industrial Park, Xi’an Software Industrial Park, and the Changsha National Development Zone. Beyond the exchange activities organized by its central committee, “more than one hundred separate exchanges” have been carried out by individual subcommittees for technical disciplines.89 ACSE’s guiding assumption is that Chinese scientists everywhere “aim to cooperate with China, plan its development, and pay back their ancestral country. Promoting the common aspirations of the Chinese people has become the spirit of the ACSE.”90 

Chinese tech transfer groups in California

The largest concentration of China S&T advocacy groups in the United States is in California – particularly Silicon Valley – where high-tech enterprise has attracted some of the world’s best minds. “The Valley” is ground for the most intense foreign tech-scavenging operations in the country – legal, illegal, and quasi-legal practices that fall just below the thresholds set by US law. While many countries exploit this resource, none matches China’s efforts.

We focus in this section on ten such Sino–US organizations, beginning with the Silicon Valley Chinese Engineers Association  ,

which with 6,000 members claims to be “the largest, the most prestigious and influential Chinese professional organization” in the US.91 According to a listing in a Silicon Valley trade directory, the SCEA:

is a non-profit professional organization formed mainly by the professionals in the Bay Area from mainland China with a mission to promote professionalism and entrepreneurship among members and to protect the members’ professional and business interests. This is done through organizing a variety of professional activities and establishing channels to allow members to engage in China’s rapid economic development [emphasis added].92

Examples of SCEA’s other activities are provided by Bernard Wong in his book The Chinese in Silicon Valley:

This organization has professional meetings, dance parties, sport events, annual meetings, and events to celebrate Thanksgiving and [PRC] National Day. When China was admitted to the WTO, the SCEA held an event to which officials of the Chinese Consulate were invited. It is concerned with promoting the professional interests of its members. In this role, the SCEA once filed a protest against NBC for misrepresenting the Olympics position of China, and it was a strong supporter of [accused nuclear spy] Wen Ho Lee.93

Descriptions of the group in Chinese media point directly to its role in technology transfer. A PRC listing of worldwide overseas Chinese organizations states: “Its goals are to increase and develop the exchange of information with China’s engineers and other high level technical and university personnel through multiple channels and various activities and promote China’s S&T development.”94 The Shanghai Qiaowu Bao explains that SCEA “endeavors wholeheartedly to establish channels of cooperation and exchange between high-tech regions of China and Silicon Valley” and organizes regular delegations to China and round-table conferences.95 Events listed on the SCEA website support this characterization. They include hosting a “Xi’an Investment and Outsourcing Forum” with the Global Sourcing Alliance96 and a PRC delegation to attract foreign talent and “convince Chinese entrepreneurs to set up Chongqing offices” both in 2008.97

SCEA’s guiding light has been former board director and president June Chu, software engineer and founder in 2003 of Allrizon Communications, a

Shanghai-based company. Chu studied at the University of Oklahoma and University of Michigan, was formerly employed by 3Com, and holds several PRC national S&T awards. In 2004 she became director of the west coast office of the Shanghai Association for the International Exchange of Personnel, a branch of the SAFEA front organization CAIEP (see above), with which SCEA has a “collaborative contract.”98

Another high-profile California group is the Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association   founded in 1999 by a group of

Chinese graduate students, who “later rose to prominence as founders and leaders of billion dollar public companies.”99 HYSTA’s members include co-founder of Yahoo Jerry Yang, Cisco’s corporate VP Jack Xu, and Baidu’s CEO Robin Li. China Netcom CEO Edward Tian and Lenovo president Yang Yuanqing are on its board.

In a classic case of self-fulfilling prophecy, HYSTA gives the following rationale for its technology link-ups with China: “If the last century was a time when China struggled to find its identity and its place in the world, the new millennium is an era when China returns to center stage.”100 The group has multiple links to China through which IT skills and entrepreneurship are channeled, including chapters in Beijing and Shanghai. As its website points out, “Hua Yuan, the first two words of HYSTA, means ‘Chinese origin’ and represents HYSTA’s deep roots in China and with the Chinese government.”101

Indeed, the organization has evolved well beyond a simple networking and technology exchange venue to a champion of political causes affecting China’s economic growth and the ability of its overseas technocracy to profit thereby. Drawing an analogy with the Beijing Olympics, HYSTA pledges to “continue to go for the gold jumping through every hurdle placed before us,” including overcoming “negative international media attention” toward China and “regulatory bodies such as the FDA [that] now scrutinize and criticize almost all of China’s industries.”102

HYSTA is linked with 20 alliance organizations and to other PRC advocacy groups through cross-memberships of its cadre. An example is the Asia–Silicon Valley Connection, whose director Vinnie Zhang sits on HYSTA’s board and founded its Venture Capital Group – a “platform for members to exchange information, share knowledge and leverage resources.”103

Zhang, a Shanghai native, holds a business degree from Berkeley. Her career has been spent making and brokering strategic investments in Asia in various technology fields.104 The Asia–Silicon Valley Connection, Zhang’s current venture, was created as “a forum for understanding and networking between Silicon Valley and Asia” and a vehicle for promoting the “natural links” between the two. Although California’s expatriate experts “still have strong ties to Asia,” they lack knowledge of business opportunities and suffer a dearth of “infrastructure” to bridge the gap. ASVC provides that infrastructure. The group claims it “is not race-based” even though seven of its eight board members have Chinese surnames.105

One organization that is intentionally race-based is the Chinese American

Science and Technology Advancement Foundation  . CAS-TAF takes a different approach to bilateral S&T cooperation by focusing on the education of Chinese-Americans in the US and Chinese nationals in China or the US. Specifically, it assists “Chinese-American technical professionals” via seminars, continuing education, scholarships, and language training; “Chinese scholars enrolled in masters or doctoral programs in the United States”; and Chinese professors in China through intensive short-term training programs in the US. CAS-TAF acknowledges “collaborating with donors in the selection of educational assistance recipients.”106

Beyond this, CAS-TAF supports Sino–US technology exchange by brokering cooperative ties between American and Chinese universities, “organizing visits between Chinese and American technology and industry leaders to facilitate business and technology ventures,” and consulting with “Chinese agencies in developing technology and economic development zones,” including projects in Jinan, Wuhan, and Chengdu.107 The organization was on the short-list of invitees to a reception for China advocacy groups hosted by the PRC’s Los Angeles consulate in 2007.108

The Silicon Valley Science and Technology Association  is another PRC-oriented group that has gained prominence in the Valley. Founded in 1998 by Chinese specialists in IT and biomedical disciplines, it gives as its mission to:

Promote China’s economic reform and opening, promote prosperity for both China and the US through building channels for technological, commercial, and cultural exchange between the two countries.109

Related goals are: forging cooperative links between members and “business communities in China” and promoting “investment and technology exchange between the US and China,”110 which includes providing information to PRC state-run transfer organizations.

For example, in 2003 SVSTA entertained a delegation from the

Guangdong Overseas Chinese Affairs Office at its headquarters in Fremont. Some 20 reps from other California Chinese S&T professional organizations also attended. The OCAO leader thanked participants for their important contributions to the “scientific progress of humanity” and assured them of “long-term service”   from the OCAO. SVSTA and the other groups then reported to the OCAO the “status” of their organizations and results of their exchange missions to China.111

In May 2005 it was SVSTA’s turn to call on the Office. Director Fan Qun told his PRC hosts that although its members have lived in the US for a long time, they “are paying very close attention to China’s development. . . . Every year SVSTA forms groups to bring painstakingly selected high-tech projects back [sic] to China for exchange and discussion.” The Guangdong OCAO vice-director who met Fan said his organization would do “everything in its power” to support these overseas experts, emphasizing the “great importance of strengthening bilateral cooperation and exchange” given the fact that “many OCS and ethnic Chinese professionals in the US have their hands on   advanced science and technology.”112

In October 2008 Fan led his tenth (!) SVSTA delegation to Shenzhen. According to a report by the Guangdong OCAO, these trips over the years have been responsible for introducing more than 100 high-tech projects to China, while affording SVSTA members a chance to “repay and return kindness to their ancestral country and hometowns.” Fan wants Shenzhen to be another Silicon Valley and is helping to bring this about by making available to the PRC a database of “all Silicon Valley inventions, patents, and projects.” He also wants China to put “technology transfer mechanisms”   in Europe.113

Of the many China S&T advocacy groups in California, the Silicon Valley Chinese Overseas Business Association   has some of the best links to the Chinese government (or is less reticent about claiming them). Established in 1999 as a result of trips made to China under the Spring Light program, SCOBA serves as “a bridge for exchange” between Silicon Valley and the PRC. Although its members are technical experts, many own high-tech businesses, hence its name. SCOBA describes its ties to China as follows:

Some members serve as advisors to MOST, MII, MOFTEC, and provincial and municipal governments such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hunan, Liaoning, Dalian, etc. They assist and participate in planning and policymaking for the development of China’s high-tech industry. Many members hold concurrent posts as professors and researchers in China’s domestic universities and research institutes.114

These links are also apparent in the CVs of top members. Chairwoman Huang Jing  , a Berkeley engineering PhD and owner of San Jose’s Anbow Corp., received China MOE funds for three consecutive years to return to China for cooperation. She has led “cooperation groups” to China, met leaders of the central government, and was awarded a professorship at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.115

Daniel Zhu is a Virginia Tech graduate, CEO of the Silicon Valley firm Zaptron, and serves on several official US boards and professional committees. At the same time, Zhu is a member of MOST’s Foreign Experts Advisory Group, a senior researcher at Beijing University, a member of the Ministry of Information Industry’s Expert Advisory Group, a technical advisor to Hunan’s Office of Information Industry, editor of a PRC magazine (Kexue Touzi or Science Investment), and a “technical advisor to several high-tech PRC firms.”116

Jack Peng, another top SCOBA officer, is a senior engineer at AMD in microprocessor design. He has headed delegations of technical experts to China, alone and in concert with the OCAO, and has held several prominent posts in US-based overseas Chinese organizations. In 1996 he accepted a MII invitation to lead a “lecture group” of experts in microelectronics to 24 places in China.117 Peng described the importance of overseas Chinese scholars to China’s development in an interview he gave to Japanese academic Endo Homare:

I think if we quit America and went entirely back to China, China’s development would halt. Even if it didn’t halt, it would certainly have limitations. For us, America is the base that will allow China to develop. If we stay here, or at least some of us do, we can always be chasing after the latest high tech that advances day by day at a dazzling pace.118

Peng went on to claim:

China regards those of us living overseas as essential. It extends a hand to us, encouraging us to make the results of our research blossom on Chinese soil. It also asks us for know-how to develop its market. Most of us serve as advisors to the Chinese government through the SCOBA organization.119 Finally:

It’s more advantageous to China for us to make our contributions living here. . . . Everyone has entered into a system of full-scale cooperation.120

Member Sam Liu, CEO of Silicon Valley’s Newnex Technology and former director of the Chinese American Semiconductor Professional Association (see below), got his start as a dual major in nuclear physics and computer science at Colorado State University. He then did post-doc work for the US Department of Energy. Liu is frequently invited to lecture in China and has multiple connections with MOST, MOFTEC, and other state-level PRC organizations.121 Liu told Endo:

We are not only heartened that our country [i.e., China] is venturing forth as a matter of policy to bring its overseas intellectuals inside the China market, but we feel a sense of fulfillment brimming with pride. The strength of Chinese PhD entrepreneurs in America lies here. Those born in China and most familiar with that culture will bring the world’s most advanced technology to China.122

SCOBA’s aims are straightforward:

To link up with Silicon Valley and overseas Chinese scholars.

To exchange information on technology, products, markets, and personnel with domestic Chinese firms in the same line of business.

  To conduct all types of training and seminars for the Chinese government and domestic companies.

  To engage in cooperative research and development and joint training of personnel with Chinese universities and research institutes.

  To perform consulting services for high-tech Chinese domestic industries.

To assist Chinese companies in developing international markets. To introduce overseas experts, knowledge, and venture capital to China.

  To develop high-tech products.

  To return to China to found and develop overseas scholar businesses and entrepreneurial parks.123

Four more organizations round out our survey of China’s California advocacy groups. The Chinese American Professors and Professionals

Network  124 or “Scholars Net” was established in 1991 for

“high-level” specialists, some 7,000 of whom are distributed “throughout

China and the world but primarily the US.” Its leading members are in California. The group organizes and participates in Sino–US tech exchange activities, sponsors technology transfer missions, sends delegations of experts to lecture in China, and mobilizes large numbers of Chinese in the US to attend the Guangzhou transfer convention. Scholars Update  is its online journal.125

Scholars Net provides a platform for “rapid exchange” of information among overseas Chinese scholars and a “bridge” between scholars inside and outside of China. Its members greet PRC scientists coming to the US, put them in touch with US experts, and arrange visits to appropriate US universities and R&D facilities. It provides information on lecture visits to China so that more OCS can “participate in cooperative planning.” It also brokers meetings in China for members to “exhibit the latest technology and help start all types of scientific research programs.”126

“Net” members are linked to high-level PRC universities and labs. The group claims “close relationships with PRC government departments and R&D institutes and is often called on to convey information on important activities” (emphasis added).127 As part of its communicative function, its website posts announcements from outreach groups such as the Shanghai OCAO and the LA consulate. Photos of members with their PRC counterparts are posted to the site under the caption “What did they contribute?”128

The Chinese Scholars Association, Southern California    is another such scholarly group dedicated to the “development of science, technology and higher education and enhancement of Sino–

American friendship and mutual understanding,” terms the reader will recognize by now as euphemisms for technology transfer. Members attend the same Guangzhou tech transfer convention, the same dinners hosted by the LA Consul General and its S&T staff, and receive the same delegations from outreach groups like CAST. CSA missions to China have “carried out broad and deep exchanges” with PRC scholars and the OCAO, achieving “huge results.” One such trip resulted in 19 project agreements with funding from MOST.129

The North American Chinese Semiconductor Association    with some 4,000 members joins many of its sister organizations in claiming to be “one of the largest and most active Chinese professional organizations in the US.” It shares the usual S&T advocacy group goals of networking, support for its members’ careers, and “global” technology exchange (the Chinese version of its website has   or “Sino–American exchange” instead).130 Examples of its interactions include: hosting a 2008 China–US IT Forum with officials from Wuhan, sponsoring a delegation from Nanjing whose purpose “is to recruit and/or interact with high-level overseas Chinese scholars and professionals,” sending members on a familiarization visit to Zhongguancun science park, exchanging ideas with officials from Wuxi about “further technical cooperation,” sharing “knowledge and experience” with officials from Suzhou, and a follow-up trip to Nanjing to discuss projects with “high ranking government officials.”131

Finally, the Silicon Valley Chinese American Computer Association 

  , as is evident in the traditional character forms used in its title, began as a Taiwanese group that broadened its allegiance as trade and business opportunities moved across the Straits. The group describes itself as “the oldest high-tech organization of its kind in Silicon Valley . . . comprised of hundreds of computer enterprises with thousands of employees and aggregate revenues in the billions of dollars.”132 Its history demonstrates the predicament in which tech transfer places the host country:

In 1980, when the computer revolution was erupting in Silicon Valley, groups of Chinese science students brought computer technology back [sic] to Taiwan and began producing hardware to export back to the United States. Other groups of students many of whom are now members of the SVCACA seized the opportunity to import these products, assemble them into PC systems, and distribute them all throughout the United States.133

Technology created in the United States and used to produce computers in the US was “brought back” to Taiwan to make components repackaged for sale by Chinese students in the US.

Today, much of Taiwan’s computer manufacturing operations have been moved to Mainland China. Our Association’s relations have shifted alongside this trend. Our Association was the first high-tech organization to visit China. Since that initial visit, we have sent delegations to China virtually every year, several times per year. Due to our constant level of activity, we have established strong relations with associations, science parks, civil servants, and politicians in China. We have also helped to coordinate many investment forums in the United States, featuring Chinese delegations.134

With offices in Beijing, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Taipei, SVCACA is on track to continue its mission of connecting Greater China with Silicon Valley. 

Specialty groups and Taiwan-oriented S&T organizations

Space limitations preclude detailed treatment of many dozens of other China and Taiwan S&T advocacy groups, including those focused on particular technical disciplines and professions. We describe a sampling of them in the remainder of this chapter.

The Chinese American Semiconductor Professional Association   was founded in 1991 to become “the largest Chinese American semiconductor professional organization worldwide” (NACSA’s claim notwithstanding).135 Headquartered in Silicon Valley, CASPA has chapters in Austin, Dallas, Phoenix, and Portland and another five offices in Hsin Chu (Taiwan), Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and Singapore. Its 3,000 members host delegations from China and Taiwan and go there in return to participate in overseas exchange symposia and enjoy “face-to-face round-table meetings” with executives from China’s high-tech parks.136

The Chinese Information and Networking Association   in

Silicon Valley and its “sister organization” in New England “serve as a unique bridge for American and Far East technology companies to proactively exchange information, develop mutual understanding, and create business opportunities” in the field of computer networks.137 The organization “plays a major role in introducing resources and opportunities from Asia to members who are interested in going back to Asia and China for their business and career opportunities.” It, too, organizes delegations to China and hosts visiting expert groups from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.138

Looking at other technical professions, the National Society of Medical

Scientists – Chinese American Association   has as its goals a typical mix of advancing its members’ livelihoods and supporting the PRC’s technological development. The “activities” part of its website is littered with announcements about exchange programs, China investment and cooperation opportunities, programs for introducing technology and knowledge  , link-ups with PRC technology development projects and transfer organizations, visits to China and hosting PRC delegations to

the US, as well as support for official PRC programs.139

The Sino-American Pharmaceutical Professionals Association    was formed in 1991 to foster members’ career development and

“promote scientific exchange and business cooperation between the US and China.” Its 4,000 members belong to chapters in New England, Philadelphia, the SF Bay area, and Shanghai. SAPA makes available “in service to science” a variety of venues to facilitate communication between American and Chinese scientists, policymakers and government officials, while serving as a bridge (that word again) for cooperation.140

New York State is host to the Overseas Chinese Physics Association 

  , a group of some 400 scientists founded in 1990. Although its charter does not mention China specifically, the connection is implied in its first objective “to promote international understanding and mutual awareness of scientific achievements by physicists all over the world”; by its support for “Physics without Borders”; by its co-hosting of events with PRC state entities, such as a 2009 conference with the CAS Institute of Modern Physics in Lanzhou; and by the composition of its membership, which includes scientists at China’s Institute of High Energy Physics, Institute of Condensed Matter Physics, Qinghua and Fudan Universities – along with nuclear facilities at Argonne, Brookhaven, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Livermore, and Los Alamos National Labs.141

The Chinese Institute of Engineers, USA   grew from a

Taiwan-oriented organization with roots that go back to 1917 to a Greater China-affiliated body “with a mission to serve members from all over the United States.” Its roster of 5,000 is divided among five regional chapters and one disciplinary chapter,142 and includes engineers with both PRC and Taiwan backgrounds. The political balance is maintained by hosting major technology exchange events in China (the Sino–American Technology and Engineering Conference) and Taiwan (the Modern Engineering and Technology Seminar) in alternate years.143

SATEC meetings, which occur during odd calendar years, are typically sponsored on the China side by the State Economic and Trade Commission, the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, and the China Association for International Exchange of Personnel. At the 2001 event, some 238 topics were proposed by its PRC sponsors, which CIE’s leadership used as a basis for choosing American specialists to address the conference. The lectures were supplemented by “on-the-spot exchanges” with engineers at Chinese companies.144 One member of the CIE group reportedly recommended that China buy out insolvent US technology startups to “cash in on their research capabilities and talents as a short-cut to meeting global competition.”145

Finally, there is the Taiwan-oriented Monte Jade Global Science and

Technology Association  , which blossomed from a Silicon

Valley office in 1989 into a worldwide alliance of 14 chapters, including 11 in the United States. Its “objective is to promote the cooperation and mutual flow of technology and investment” through technical seminars, “high-tech study tours” in Asia, and workshops on overseas investment.146

The authors regret that the contributions of other US-based China advocacy groups to China’s S&T development cannot be acknowledged here due to lack of space. We also wish to state our belief that these groups do not set out deliberately to subvert the United States. Our claim is that helping China become a competitive power through “transferred” technology entails for these advocacy groups no contradiction, and the implications of their behavior for the larger body of Americans are to them irrelevant. In addition, while declarations of support for China are common, it is hard to find sentiment, not to mention concrete action taken, in favor of their American host.

In the following chapters we examine in detail the circumstances of China’s overseas scholars who form the backbone of these groups and the role they play in China’s S&T development.

Notes

1 www.gxistc.net/home/kjdt/gjkj/4007.asp.

2 Called the “China International ICT (Information, Communication and Telecom) Innovation

Cluster”   or CIIIC.

3 , literally “S&T counselor at ministerial rank.”

4 Yao Shibing   founded Jinfonet Software in 1998 and by 2001 had a branch operating in China. An expert in database design, Dr. Yao is former chair of the University of Maryland’s computer science department. He is active professionally and socially in the US Chinese community, participating in CAST meetings and serving on the US-based China Foundation.

5 UCTID announced it was sending a delegation to China to gather information and facilitateCIIIC’s cooperation with major US telecom firms and “expert personnel in ethnic Chinese companies” in the United States.

6 The project, a joint effort between MOST, the Zhongguancun administrative committee, andthe University of Maryland, is designed to further S&T cooperation and promote “transnational resources allocation” (www.cns.hk).

7 The meeting was put together by CAST-USA President Lin Minyue  , a graduate of Fudan University’s physics department employed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.

8 Liu Yun   and Shen Lin   (“The Current

Situation and Countermoves on Development and Utilization of Overseas Chinese Experts Intellectual Resources”) in   (Science Research Management) vol. 22.4 (July 2001), pp. 115–125.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 www.nyconsulate.prchina.org/ch.

13 Ibid. SAFEA recently established a New York office to expedite technology “exchange.” Inaddition to its work with the consulate, the office also supports recruitment efforts by the PRC’s UN S&T delegation.

14 www.chinaconsulatechicago.org. According to the consulate’s website, the Detroit ACSE “for many years has maintained close relations with the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers and other organizations and actively promoted cooperation and the exchange of information and technology between the Chinese and US auto industries.”

15 losangeles.china-consulate.org.

16 Ibid.

17 CAST-USA newsletter, 2008.5.

18 www.chinaconsulatesf.org.

19 www.chinaconsulatesf.org.

20 www.triwayinc.com. Note: the term “S&T” is missing from the site’s English language version.

21 Ibid.

22 www.saiep.org. In 2002, SCEA signed a “collaboration contract and formalized a partnership” with the SAIEP office in Silicon Valley “based on mutual benefit” (www.scea.org).

23 www.saiep.org.

24 www.hysta.org.

25 CAS’s “100 Persons Program”   became a “1,000 Talents Program”   and now SAIEP is sponsoring a “10,000 Overseas Scholars Convergence Program.” The lack of a single-character morpheme in Chinese meaning “100,000”   may pose a natural constraint to this process, as the magical four-character expression turns into five characters  , which is less auspicious. You could omit “person”   and go with “100,000 Program”  , however, which keeps the important canonical format intact.

26 www.saiep.org.

27 www.cast-usa.net.

28 Ibid.29 Ibid.

30 According to the October 2005 edition of the CAST-USA journal   (Overseas Scholars). 31 www.cast-la.org.

32 www.ise.ncsu.edu/chao/more_info.html.

33 www.castnc.org.

34 castusa-gny.org. 35 www.castct.org.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 www.cast-la.org.

39 www.castdc.org.

40 www.sjtu.org/sjtuaa/index.php.

41 www.nuaa-us.org.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 www.tsinghua-nc.org.

45 The spelling “Chiao-Tung” is in the original Wade–Giles system, which identifies it as Taiwan-based.

46 Also called the North American International Exchange Center  .

47 www.naiec.org, February 2005.

48 www.zzi.net/china/2002NACBECc.shtml.

49 “The first North American New and High Technology Projects and Talented Persons Exchange

Conference”   was in fact NAIEC’s second such annual meeting.

50 www.scoba.org.

51 www.zzi.net/china/2002NACBECc.shtml.

52 Ibid.

53 www.scoba.org.

54 NAIEC and China’s OCAO sponsored these annual events at least through 2007, as a result ofwhich a “large quantity of projects and skilled personnel” were made available to China (news.sina.com.cn/o/2007-01-06/112810937711s.shtml).

55 www.capst.org/events/03172003.htm.

56 www.cast-sd.org/china/InvitationToChina.doc.

57 www.ucapo.org.

58 Ibid. Neither NAIEC nor UCTID, both prominent DC-area S&T transfer organizations, areunder UCAPO’s umbrella.

59 www.overseas.sh.cn.

60 www.ucapo.org.

61 . The English part of UCAPO’s website mistranslates the term   as “other minority groups.”

62 www.overseas.sh.cn. “Integrate technology resources” means arrange PRC access to US technology. “Market resources” is a euphemism for “venue to commercialize US technology.”

Stripped of its rhetoric, the phrase simply means “technology developed by experts in the United States is transferred to China for practical application.”

63 www.ucapo.org.

64 www.uctid.org/index.asp. Doan claims “intensive management and policy making experiences for many Chinese national R&D projects .” His degrees in thermodynamics and computational fluid dynamics suggest a career spent modeling high-energy physical events, although his China resumé lacks specifics. Doan’s direct involvement with the US began in 1978, when he became an international fellow at the Stanford Research Institute.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid.

68 casbi.org.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid. The politburo members were Zhang Gaoli   and Li Yuanchao  . CASB claims to have gotten two hours of Li’s time during the visit.

71 www.overseas.sh.cn. Liu’s China credentials can be gauged by his status as the only non-PRC resident appointed to the standing committee of the All-China Youth Federation.

72 www.chinatalents.gov.cn. January 2009.

73 www.cysn.net/zuzhi/000404001.htm.

74 Ibid.

75 During visits to the US by Chinese dignitaries, “NACAST has organized thousands of localChinese to carry out resolute struggles against international persons involved in Taiwan independence, Tibetan independence and the ‘democracy movement’, thus creating a good impression on world opinion” (www.overseas.sh.cn).

76 www.capst.org.

77 Ibid.

78 www.chinatalents.gov.cn.

79 A Beijing-based organization formed in 1988 with chapters worldwide. It is run by the CCPCentral Committee’s United Front Work Department  .

80 www.chinahouston.org.

81 FACPSU, registered in the state of Georgia, uses the term   (guonei, “inside the country”) to mean “China.” There is a lot going on here psycholinguistically. The assumption is that anyone reading the material understands China to be the country (guo) referred to. America, the place where the members reside, is outside “the country.”

82 www.facpsu.org.

83 www.acp-atlanta.org.

84 Ibid.

85 www.acse.org/index.

86 Besides Chicago, ACSE has chapters in Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Denver,Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New Jersey, New York, Phoenix, and Washington,

DC. It has professional societies for biotechnology, business administration, chemistry and chemical engineering, computing, finance, industrial and applied mathematics, intelligent transportation systems, law, mechanical engineering, medicine, pharmaceuticals, and telecommunications.

87 www.chinaconsulatechicago.org.

88 www.acse.org/index.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid.

91 www.scea.org.

92 Northern California Global Trade Assistance Directory, 2000–2001. About 10 percent of SCEA’s members are from Taiwan.

93 Bernard P. Wong, The Chinese in Silicon Valley: Globalization, Social Networks, and Ethnic Identity, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005, p. 61.

94 www.hxuc.com/qiaotuan/beimeizhou/meiguo/87.htm.

95 http://qwb.sh.gov.cn/shqb/node113/sqxx/node149/userobject1ai7579.html.

96 GSA is a Silicon Valley-based organization founded in 2007 dedicated to helping companiesget started with “the global sourcing of IT solutions” (globalsourcinginfo.org).

97 www.scea.org.

98 SCEA news release, May 10, 2004.

99 www.hysta.org.

100 Ibid.

101 Ibid.

102 Ibid.

103 Ibid.

104 www.asvc.org.

105 Ibid. As of June 2009.

106 castaf.org.

107 Ibid.

108 http://big5.fmprc.gov.cn/gate/big5/losangeles.china-consulate.org.

109 www.svsta.org/index.htmls.

110 Ibid.

111 Ibid.

112 gocn.southcn.com/qwxw/200505310028.htm.

113 gocn.southcn.com/qw2index/2006dfqw/2006dfqwsz/200810170067.htm. The article noted that Fan’s personal “home in Silicon Valley, USA has become a guest house for entertaining his friends from China. Shenzhen officials visiting the US and technical personnel all gather at his house.” The SVSTA website has a photo of a California-style residence with 18 people outside holding a banner which reads, “Strengthen cooperation. Promote Exchange.”

114 www.scoba.org.

115 Ibid.

116 Ibid. In 2000 Zhu headed a “high-tech industrial advisory group” of US and Japan-basedChinese experts to China, where the group gave “advisory reports”   and performed technology exchanges at S&T enclaves in Beijing, Tianjin, Xi’an, Suzhou, and Shanghai. Endo Homare credits Zhu with a proposal to the PRC government to set up a “parallel” Silicon Valley in China. His International Society of Information Fusion “has an advisory role for Chinese state policy through overseas specialists in telecommunications.” Endo Homare.    (When China Links Up with Silicon Valley). Tokyo: Nikkei BP, 2001, p. 174.

117 www.scoba.org.

118 Endo, When China Links Up with Silicon Valley, p. 163.

119 Ibid.

120 Ibid.

121 Ibid., pp. 178–180.

122 Ibid., p. 181. On pp. 198–203, Endo prints schematics showing contacts between SCOBA’smembers and PRC officials as a means of demonstrating “to what extent these Silicon Valley leaders are linked directly to the Chinese central government and are carrying out a world strategy for China’s development.”

123 Ibid.

124 Variant names are  .

125 www.scholarsupdate.com.

126 Ibid.

127 Ibid.

128 Ibid. The Chinese phrase is  .

129 seis.natsci.csulb.edu/kchan/csa.htm.

130 www.nacsa.com.

131 Ibid.

132 www.svcaca.com.

133 Ibid.134 Ibid.

135 www.caspa.com. CASPA’s claim was recently tempered to read “the most influential.”

136 Ibid.

137 www.cina.org.

138 Ibid.

139 www.nsms-caa.org.

140 www.sapaweb.org.

141 www.ocpaweb.org.

142 The Overseas Chinese Environmental Engineers and Scientists Association 

 .

143 www.cie-usa.org.

144 www.ctiin.com.cn/gjhz/mzzg.htm, visited October 2001.

145 China Daily, October 25, 2001. State Economic and Trade Commission Minister Li Rongrong credited CIE/USA as “instrumental” in helping China solve key technological problems, calling it a “critical venue for absorbing the intellectual resources of overseas Chinese” and an “important forum for supporting the fatherland’s economic and technological development.”

146 www.montejade.org.