In 2012 Jin was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison and fined $20,000 for stealing trade secrets.1
U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo called Jin’s actions “a raid in no uncertain terms. It is a raid to steal technology. You conducted this raid in the dead of night when you knew that there was a lesser chance you’d get caught.” At Jin’s sentencing, the judge said she also possessed confidential Chinese military documents and was identified as an employee of China-based Sun Kaisens, a telecommunications firm that U.S. government officials say develops products for China’s armed forces. Prosecutors later said the secrets she carried included descriptions on how Motorola produces a walkie-talkie communications feature. Motorola estimated the stolen data was worth $600 million.2
Motorola also investigated Jin’s alleged ties to another company, Lemko Corporation, which in turn had a commercial relationship with rising Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies. Motorola reported that a number of its Chinese-born former engineers, including Jin, were working for Lemko, a small cellular technology firm that had set up shop down the street from Motorola headquarters in Schaumburg. Motorola alleged in a lawsuit that the employees were sending confidential information to the chairman of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei. The defendants denied the claims and the parties settled the case with no admissions of liability. But Motorola Solutions CEO Greg Brown joined Maria on Fox Business in December 2018 and discussed the case. “Huawei definitely stole trade secrets,” said Brown, “and we sued but we subsequently settled.”3 After the Fox Business interview, Motorola retracted Brown’s statement. The settlement’s terms prevented such comments. But no legal settlement can conceal the curious fact that right after Motorola agreed to stop suing Huawei, the Chinese government gave Motorola a critical regulatory approval the government had been sitting on for months. Coincidence?
More recently, the U.S. government has charged Huawei, founded by a former member of China’s People’s Liberation Army and now the world’s largest telecom company, with a range of offenses, including fraud and conspiracy to steal trade secrets. The company has denied the charges.
You won’t often hear a company operating in China criticize the Chinese Communist Party for fear of retribution. But for decades there has been a long list of charges, lawsuits, and indictments brought against Chinese companies for theft of intellectual property or trade secrets. In an interview with Maria in 2018, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said 90 percent of companies in China are using the Microsoft operating system, although only 1 percent are actually paying for it. Ballmer said the theft has to end. “I’m a free trader, by nature.… [I]t’s the best thing for the world,” Ballmer told Maria on Fox Business. “This one’s a tricky issue because it’s absolutely clear that the rules don’t apply in China, and the U.S. government needs to do something.…”4
The impact of theft on tech companies and their investors is significant. “Without any pressure from the U.S. government—we’re talking about $10 billion plus, for example, in Microsoft that would go into profit,” Ballmer said.5 Getting appropriately paid for its software in China would increase the company’s annual earnings by 25 percent.
More than a decade after the Motorola incident, the Chinese Communist Party’s espionage and intellectual property theft campaign seems more aggressive than ever. “The ultimate ambition of China’s rulers isn’t to trade with the United States. It is to raid the United States,” said Attorney General Bill Barr in a July 2020 speech. “If you are an American business leader, appeasing the [People’s Republic of China] may bring short-term rewards. But in the end, the PRC’s goal is to replace you.”6 Soon after Barr’s remarks, the U.S. ordered the closure of Beijing’s consulate in Houston to protect U.S. intellectual property. The Chinese government ordered the closure of the the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, Sichuan province, in retaliation.
“I’m not seeking anything with China anymore. I’m not seeking anything. I think China’s been a one-way street,” President Trump tells us. “I think we made a great trade deal, by the way… we get $240 billion worth of purchases a year. That’s pretty good.”7 He’s talking about the “Phase One” trade deal he signed with China in January, which reduced some tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the United States. In return, Beijing reduced some of its tariffs and promised to buy more U.S. agricultural products. The Chinese government also promised some protection for intellectual property.
But a strong commitment under Chinese law to prevent the theft of U.S. inventions and trade secrets—plus a real opening of the Chinese economy to foreign competition—turned out to be deal-breakers in Beijing. The Phase One deal was signed only after a more comprehensive agreement had been reached by negotiators, but it was then rejected by the Chinese regime.
Trump recalls the moment after negotiators struck the original agreement, which included fundamental reforms of China’s treatment of U.S. inventions and companies: “I made a deal with China. It was unbelievable. It opened up China.… It was done.… And then we got a call that, ‘We’d like to see you,’ meaning my people. So I sent Mnuchin and Lighthizer,” the U.S. Treasury secretary and U.S. Trade Representative.8
When the Americans met their Chinese counterparts, the communist officials said they could not accept “three or four points” on which they had earlier agreed. The U.S. team then called the president. Trump recalls: “I said, ‘Take a walk from the deal. Immediately walk.… You don’t have to hear the points. Take a walk. Because I know what the points are going to be. You can’t go into China.’ ”
Trump continues: “So they go into this beautiful room, and they have four, you know, boards, everything done very professionally with these people. And one of the boards said, ‘We won’t do… intellectual property.… We won’t do opening up.’
