From George Lerner
CNN
Thursday, July 1, 2004 Posted: 7:29 PM EDT (2329 GMT)

(CNN) -- Federal authorities in Camden, New Jersey, charged seven people Thursday with conspiring to sell military technology to China.

The defendants were arrested Thursday morning at their homes or offices and were scheduled to appear during the afternoon in federal court in Camden.

Prosecutors allege that the seven violated U.S. export laws by selling defense weapons systems, including radar, smart weapons, electronic warfare and communications.

All the suspects are employees or officers at Universal Technologies Inc. and Manten Electronics, both of Mount Laurel, New Jersey.

One complaint involved Universal Technologies President Teng Fang Li, Vice President Zhonghe Ji, and employee Ronge Tong.

A second complaint charged Manten President Xu Weibo, purchasing agent Xiu Ling Chen, Vice President Hao Li Chen and company controller Kwan Chun Chan.

Five of the defendants are naturalized U.S. citizens and two are legal permanent residents.

The charges stem from an 18-month investigation that involved the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

They are charged with conspiracy, wire fraud and violation of the Export Administration Act.

The export violations carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine. Each count of conspiracy and wire fraud carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/01/chin...pons/index.html

I am not surprised. Most Chinese (regardless of nationality) people can't seems to resist the lure of money. There is why there are more stories of traitors in Chinese history than Patriots. Otherwise Yue Fei won't have died needlessly.

This catch is only the tip of the iceberg. So far, nothing has been worse than the thief done at Lucent Technology a few years back, and possibly the striping of the EP-3 which landed in Hainan.

well if you cannot invent the technology you have to steal it.....

the problem is that the chinese wants to ascend the technology leader to quickly......their overall goal is to reduce the gap between them and uncle sam...and looking at their defense budget, their commitment into R&D is insufficient, their collaboration between PLA and their top universities and defence contractor is nothing compare to uncle sam. given this trend they can forget about being on par or even overtaking uncle sam in terms of technology......sigh....this itself is an inherent display of the weakness in chinese culture......too often they wanted to aim for the sky without even learning how to crawl.....

Well throughout Chinese history, there are great inventions, like the invention of gun powder. However, Chinese are known for being enterprising rather than being creative or innovative. The mentality of "so what if you are creative, you can't earn a living also no use". Thus, we can see how many true artists there are in the chinese community - pitiful. Why? artists are usually known to be poor. Their works only earn money when they are dead.

Look in general how many new invention came out from any chinese society (yes, including Taiwan) - hardly. But there are hardly any place on this earth that you won't see a chinese, or a chinese restaurant. There are hardly any major city that hasn't got a china town.

Bottom line is, Chinese are not great inventors. Chinese are great entreprenuers. Chinese like to get rich and care nothing else around them.