Tag: china

CCP Bans Sale Of Retired Military Equipment, Citing Security Risks

The Chinese regime’s military and public security authorities have jointly issued an order banning the sale, assembly, and marketing of retired military equipment, citing “security risks to military secrets.”

The Notice on Prohibiting Sales Activities Involving Retired or Scrapped Military Equipment was issued on July 28 by the Chinese regime’s six central governmental departments, including the top defense command and decision-making body of the Chinese military – Central Military Commission’s Logistics Support Department, Equipment Development Department, and Political and Legal Affairs Commission, along with the Ministry of Public Security, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

The notice acknowledges that, in recent years, some vendors have openly sold – both online and offline – retired or scrapped military equipment containing sensitive information, resulting in “adverse effects” and creating “security risks.” It also said one of the purposes of the ban is “to uphold the positive image of the people’s military.”

The notice stipulates that no entity or individual may sell retired or scrapped military equipment. Such equipment – as defined by the military – encompasses various types of hardware, ammunition, devices, related components, and materials that have been officially retired from service and designated for disposal as scrap.

The notice also prohibits any unit or individual from using dismantled parts of decommissioned equipment to produce, modify, and re-assemble them, and then sell them as imitations of military equipment that the public might believe was real. Commercial marketing and promotion of decommissioned and scrapped equipment and related imitations are also prohibited.

The official notice did not disclose the types, quantities, or sources of decommissioned equipment currently on the market, nor did it state whether any military information had been leaked.

Li Yuansong, a Chinese military equipment and memorabilia collector, told The Epoch Times that Chinese military-issued gear has long been collected by enthusiasts.

“Much of the Chinese weaponry is derived from technology dating back to the former Soviet era [1922-91]. While a small number of firearms produced after the ‘Reform and Opening-up’ incorporated Western technology, the majority remain updated versions of Soviet-based hardware,” he said. “The craftsmanship is crude and hardly advanced. If Western weapons experts were to dismantle and analyze them, they would likely laugh about them.

“The real fear isn’t so much about leaking secrets, but rather that foreigners might discover just how backward China’s conventional weaponry actually is,” Li said of the new ban.

Li Xiangyang, a Chinese military scholar who used a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal, told The Epoch Times that in recent years, individuals have been reselling military equipment online.

“Some components bear serial numbers, model designations, and signs of use. In the eyes of the authorities, these could reveal information regarding production batches, maintenance standards, and quality,” Li said.

“Regulations dictate that many decommissioned items must be destroyed, with metal materials collected and melted down. This notice is primarily aimed at enforcing the Anti-Espionage Law, as the authorities do not want foreign entities to gain insight into the Chinese regime’s military-industrial technology.”

Su Pei, a China-based military scholar who used a pseudonym out of fear of reprisal, told The Epoch Times that the mention of upholding “the positive image of the people’s military” in the ban notice shows that the Chinese regime is concerned about more than just so-called secret leaks, but also about hiding the backwardness of the Chinese weaponry.

“It also worries that individuals within the military might sell used military equipment through underground channels – goods that could ultimately be resold to foreign adversaries. Such incidents have already occurred in coastal regions,” he said.

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SpaceX Purges Chinese Personnel And Parts From Supply Chain as Space Force Awards $1.6 Billion Launch Contract

SpaceX is conducting what sources close to the company describe as an unprecedented supply chain purge — systematically removing Chinese nationals and Chinese-manufactured components from every facility that touches its hardware. The move, first reported by Nikkei Asia, represents the most aggressive decoupling of a major American defense contractor from the Chinese Communist Party’s industrial ecosystem in recent memory.

According to Nikkei’s reporting, SpaceX is instructing its suppliers in writing not to assign Chinese nationals to any facility producing SpaceX hardware and to prohibit equipment manufactured by Chinese companies — including surveillance cameras and routers — from those production floors. Audit teams dispatched by SpaceX are actively verifying compliance. The company is simultaneously building what it internally calls an “NCNT” supply chain — Non-China, Non-Taiwan — to insulate production against any potential disruption in the Taiwan Strait. “We work hard to adhere to the requests and it is understandable,” one supplier source told Nikkei. “The technology is a matter of national security, especially as SpaceX also has commercial partnerships with NASA.”

The timing could not be more significant. On Thursday, the U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command awarded SpaceX two task orders totaling $1.6 billion to execute 18 Falcon 9 launches under the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 program. All 18 missions will lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and are designed to deliver Space Based Sensing and Targeting capabilities — satellites providing real-time tracking of airborne threats and near-instantaneous data relay to joint warfighters. Space Force Col. Eric Zarybnisky called the two-month acquisition timeline from requirement identification to award “unprecedented,” emphasizing that “the speed our warfighter demands” drove the compressed schedule.

This is what economic nationalism looks like when it has teeth. For years, Washington demanded that defense contractors clean up their China dependencies while quietly tolerating the status quo. SpaceX is doing what the Pentagon has talked about endlessly but rarely enforced: hard-wiring the CCP out of systems that underpin American military supremacy in space. The Space Force contract ceiling for Lane 1 was raised from $5.6 billion to $17 billion just weeks ago — a signal that the U.S. military’s appetite for sovereign, China-free launch capacity is accelerating fast.

The broader context matters too. SpaceX already holds a $2.29 billion contract to build the Space Force’s low Earth orbit satellite communications backbone for low-latency warfighter data relay. Rocket Lab last week landed a parallel NSSL contract for up to 18 missile defense launches. America is rebuilding its space arsenal at speed — and the new rule is simple: no Chinese hands, no Chinese chips, no exceptions. The establishment media will frame this as xenophobia or Musk politics. What it actually is, is industrial policy that matches the threat.

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Belgium Arrests Canadian NATO Intern on Charges of Spying for China

Belgian prosecutors this week announced the arrest of a Canadian intern for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) who was accused of espionage.

Media investigations soon revealed the suspect is a Chinese-born Canadian national who was allegedly spying for China.

The Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office said it made the arrest based on a tip from NATO security services, who warned the female suspect was spending an excessive amount of time at sensitive NATO facilities and asking too many questions.

The suspect was employed as an intern at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), which is located in the city of Mons, Belgium. SHAPE handles planning and execution for all NATO operations.

“She is suspected of spying on behalf of a third country and of being a member of a criminal organization,” prosecutors said in a statement released Saturday.

The suspect’s home and workspace in SHAPE’s information technology department were raided when she was taken into custody. On Tuesday, prosecutors extended her pretrial detention by one month and the suspect immediately filed an appeal.

Canada’s CBC News on Wednesday identified the suspect as Biwei Zhang, a systems engineer who previously worked for the Canadian Space Agency and Statistics Canada. She has also used the names Claire Zhang and Catina Zhang.

CBC said Zhang’s personal and professional profiles matched the limited information provided by Belgian prosecutors, as do numerous posts she made on Facebook and LinkedIn. A group of European news outlets reached the same conclusion about her identity.

Zhang appears to be 32 or 33 years old and holds a master’s degree from the University of Ottawa, class of 2022. She reportedly worked as an economist for Statistics Canada from 2018 to 2022, then took a job as a systems engineer for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in May 2022. Her resume also includes work as a policy analyst for the European Space Agency (ESA) and a researcher for the World Trade Organization (WTO).

To date, there have been no details of the allegations against Zhang from Belgium, Canada, or NATO, beyond the vague description of her alarming behavior and assurances from SHAPE that her questionable activities did not interfere with operational readiness. The week since her arrest was announced has included some awkward excuses about who was supposed to vet her for a security clearance and how thorough a job they did.

The ESA told Reuters on Thursday that Zhang’s position with the agency did not require a security clearance, but she was subjected to “standard human resources screening procedures.” The WTO declined a request for comment about her work history.

NATO officials said responsibility for security clearances lay with contributing member nations, which in this case would mean Canada. Canadian Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree said on Monday that national screening procedures would be reviewed to “get to the bottom of what happened.”

According to CBC News, there was a rather large red flag in Zhang’s background: the Public Service Commission of Canada in 2023 found that she “committed fraud in an application for a position at the Canada Border Services Agency by applying under two different names and emails and failing to later clarify whether she had submitted multiple applications.”

Canada’s Globe and Mail explained that Zhang “submitted applications from two e-mail addresses, one from York University and the other from the University of Montreal and twice wrote the same standardized exams in an effort, the commission found, ‘to increase her chances of being appointed.’”

Zhang requested a judicial review of this finding in February 2024, but it was dismissed by a federal court judge.

“I think the concern level would be very high in government. Everybody wants to know what happened. There are a lot of questions to be asked,” former Canadian national security adviser Jody Thomas told the Globe and Mail.

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US Intel Chiefs Back Trump’s Claim China Interfered In American Elections

A fact sheet released July 30 by the White House Government Transparency Task Force says China and its proxies bought, stole, or hacked voter data belonging to as many as 220 million Americans, including some information that was not publicly available.

The fact sheet pairs that finding with the intelligence community’s official definition of election interference, which includes a foreign power’s targeting of voter data.

It notes that, for a foreign country’s actions to amount to “election interference,” they do not have to change the actual results.

“That definition includes a foreign power’s targeting of voter registration infrastructure or data,” the task force states, citing declassified documents produced by the U.S. intelligence community.

The fact sheet was approved by the heads of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Department of Homeland Security, according to the White House.

Representatives from those agencies—as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation—also coordinated with the White House before Trump’s July 16 address and “approved the factual statements” drawn from intelligence documents used in the speech, the task force states.

Election Interference Defined

In his speech, Trump said China has long been meddling in U.S. elections, including that it was “working to influence” the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which President Joe Biden was ultimately declared the winner.

Trump did not explicitly claim that China managed to change the 2020 result, and neither did the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies.

The spy chiefs did say in the fact sheet that voter-registration data is itself part of election infrastructure and could be manipulated in ways that affect election results, for instance by preventing groups of voters from casting their ballots.

“Adversaries could alter data to potentially prevent individual voters or groups of voters from voting, causing delays on election day or forcing voters to use provisional ballots,” the task force states, citing intelligence community documents.

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China Brings Back Masking for Vulnerable People as Summer Coronavirus Spike Sweeps South

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began encouraging vulnerable residents – such as the elderly, pregnant women, and those with chronic diseases – to seek out Wuhan coronavirus vaccine products and use sanitary masks as the rate of coronavirus infections skyrocketed in July.

The Chinese state newspaper Global Times first announced in English the CDC warning of a spike in Wuhan coronavirus cases on July 26, insisting that the virus appears to be spreading much faster in southern China than in the north and that it does not appear to be causing severe infections in most people. Experts suggested that hot temperatures driving people indoors to air conditioning has created similar conditions to winter, when many do not go outside because of the cold and the limited air circulation facilitates infections.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post identified the culprit of the latest outbreak as the “Omicron NB.1.8.1 variant,” which is reportedly spreading at a “moderate” level but mostly a threat to the elderly or those with other health complications.

The Chinese CDC warned last week that it was documenting more cases of coronavirus than influenza this month, suggesting accelerating rates of infection. The vast majority of those diagnosed with the disease were reportedly between the ages of 15 to 59, suggesting that children and the elderly did not represent the majority of cases.

“The [Wuhan coronavirus] test positivity rate stood at 16.3 percent, up 4.3 percentage points from the previous week, while the influenza positivity rate was 12.6 percent, down 0.9 percentage points week on week,” the Global Times detailed.

The Global Times added that the Chinese government was now encouraging the elderly and those with health complications to “preventive measures, such as wearing masks in crowded places or on public transportation.” All were encouraged to update their vaccine product dosages, particularly pregnant women.

The state outlet China Daily reported an update on Wednesday from Beijing’s CDC discouraging residents from concern, stating that the rate of transmission in the capital city was “within normal cyclical fluctuations” and not straining medical facilities. Overcrowding in Chinese hospitals is a recurring problem during waves of respiratory infections, particularly those targeting children, as many parents choose to take their children to be hospitalized for intravenous treatment rather than attempting to treat respiratory symptoms at home. During past waves of respiratory infections citizens have documented chaotic scenes in city hospitals as emergency rooms failed to offer proper services to the large crowds of people flooding their waiting rooms and ran out of seats of IV fluid treatment.

“The [Beijing health] center said visits to fever clinics remain low across the city, hospitals have sufficient medicine supplies, and the latest increase in cases has not placed noticeable pressure on the healthcare system,” according to China Daily.

The current transmission data available from China indicates that the situation in southern China is more precarious. The U.S.-based Epoch Times, which conducted much of the early reporting exposing the calamity in Wuhan, China, as the coronavirus first began spreading in 2020, noted in its reporting on Wednesday that the gap between cases in the north and south had “widened significantly” and that one potentially complicating factor could be widespread floods in the region that have killed and displaced large numbers of people. The newspaper, citing biomedical science professor Xiaoxu Sean Lin, cited that flooding could potentially cause situations such as “population displacement, centralized sheltering, poor ventilation, overcrowded medical facilities, and compromised nutrition and rest,” all of which help spread respiratory illness.

Lin described the current reports out of the Chinese communist regime as “only the tip of the iceberg,” as many Chinese do not report symptoms consistent with a coronavirus infection, particularly when caused by a variant that only prompts mild symptoms to occur. The outbreak causing a rise in cases has been identified as “Omicron NB.1.8.1.” The South China Morning Post listed common symptoms as “fever and a sore throat.”

Citing Peng Jie, deputy director of the infectious diseases department at Southern Medical University’s Nanfang Hospital, the Morning Post noted that some experts are concerned about an “increasingly unpredictable” trend of coronavirus infections in the summer. While the Chinese CDC typically documents an increase in cases of all major respiratory diseases in the winter, state reports have explicitly noted that they have not documented a similar increase this summer of cases of influenza or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which also tend to spread more severely among children and the elderly.

Speaking to the Epoch Times, Taiwanese infectious disease specialist Cheng Yuan-yu posited the air conditioner theory for why coronavirus appears to be spreading at a faster rate.

“High outdoor temperatures drive people flocking to air-conditioned environments, which leads to spending extended periods in enclosed indoor spaces and has increased risk of indoor airborne transmission,” Cheng reportedly said. If this factor is driving infections, Cheng continued, that would mean situations such as “people going to work while sick, the confined environments of commuting, waning immunity, biases in testing and health care-seeking behavior” would result in more cases of people aged 15 to 59 being diagnosed with coronavirus, rather than children or the elderly.

The Wuhan coronavirus was originally identified in the eponymous central Chinese city of Wuhan as a novel pathogen in early 2020, though reports indicated that the first diagnosed case could have surfaced as early as November 2019. As a result of the Chinese Communist Party violently silencing those identifying a new virus, allowing “super-spreader” events to take place to obscure the spread of the disease, then engaging in human rights atrocities to imprison people in the city, the virus went on to infect millions of people around the world, killing over 7 million people.

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China To Arm Iran With Hundreds Of MANPADS Despite Trump Warnings: Report

President Trump has repeatedly said that China’s President Xi Jinping has directly assured him that Beijing will not supply Iran with weaponry or military support.

But this week these ‘assurances’ have been called into question by an Reuters investigation. “Iran is expected to receive within weeks a first shipment out of up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers, three sources familiar with the deal told ​Reuters, as it rebuilds its defenses amid war with the United States,” the fresh report says.

“The purchase, valued at $60-70 million, is one of Tehran’s largest-known efforts to strengthen its short-range air ‌defences since the outbreak of its war with the U.S. and Israel, which exposed gaps in Iran’s ability to protect military sites and strategic infrastructure,” it adds.

The fresh report cites three anonymous sources and did not receive comment from the Iranian side. Some of the assertions of the Reuters report are surprisingly specific, such as in the following:

The contract covers the purchase of between 300 and 400 man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), including Chinese-made QW-12 and FN-16 missiles, the sources said.

The deal was signed with Zhongqing Baoshang International Investment, a Hong Kong-based company that the sources said was acting as an intermediary between the Iranian ​side and the Chinese supplier.

The reporting even explores options being considered for delivery of the weapons, at a moment Iran is urgently seeking to replenish its air defense supplies after months of grinding tit-for-tat conflict with the US military.

“Two Western intelligence sources and an Iranian official said Tehran had also explored the use of overland routes to move Chinese military supplies and dual-use components ⁠more discreetly and ​reduce the risk of disruption,” Reuters continues.

MANPADS could prove especially dangerous for US helicopters and other low flying aircraft, and for Iran can serve as layer of short-range protection.

The opening days of Operation Epic Fury saw much of Iran’s anti-air units get taken out, especially across the Western part of the country, giving US-Israeli jets air superiority. However, at times the Iranians have claimed to shoot down some aircraft, and since then the US has seemed to operate from further afar.

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‘UNACCEPTABLE RISKS’: Trump Bans Import of Chinese Humanoid Robots Over National Security Concerns

‘These are not the droids that you’re looking for.’

Chinese companies have been leaping ahead in the race to develop the best, most useful (and most lethal) humanoid robots in the planet, clearly taking the lead in this flourishing industry.

But now, the Chinese droids face a major obstacle in their path, as they lose access to the planet’s largest and most robust market.

Today, it’s been reported that the Donald J. Trump administration has banned imports of humanoid robots made in China.

Officials warn they pose ‘unacceptable risks’ to US national security.

The Telegraph reported:

“US regulators barred imports of advanced Chinese robotics on Tuesday, including bipedal robots and four-legged devices, arguing they could be used to spy on American citizens or controlled remotely.

Officials at the Federal Communications Commission said: ‘Foreign-produced advanced robotics devices present an unacceptable cybersecurity and safety risk. Advanced robotic devices collect data that could be leveraged by malign actors to surveil Americans, enhance the capabilities of foreign intelligence services, or to remotely commandeer the robots’.”

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REPORT: Harvard Tops List of American Universities Taking Money From Foreign Countries – Including China

When it comes to accepting cash from foreign countries, including China, Harvard tops the list of American universities.

This is a major concern. Some might even call it a national security issue. China steals millions in intellectual property from the United States every year and higher education gives them direct access.

At the end of Trump’s first term, Senate Republicans began to focus heavily on this issue. Now they are looking at it again and Senator Tom Cotton is leading the charge.

FOX News reports:

Harvard tops nation in foreign cash haul as Cotton demands probe into China funding

One Ivy League institution has taken in more money from foreign countries, including China, than any other university in the country.

The U.S. Department of Education has, for years, compiled a list of federally funded universities that have taken in funding from abroad. The Trump administration sought to revamp the agency’s online reporting portal, and, in doing so, it has shown that one institution, Harvard University, has scored more foreign funding than any other college in the country.

Harvard is in the crosshairs of Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., for its ties to China and other foreign nations because of the reams of outside cash the university has taken in. And the Senate Republican, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, wants Education Secretary Linda McMahon to open an investigation into China’s cash flow into higher education.

“I remain concerned that millions in additional transactions with sanctioned Chinese entities may not have been reported,” Cotton wrote. “Therefore, I encourage additional scrutiny of financial ties between American universities and Communist China.”…

Cotton noted that since the portal was relaunched in January, reporting data has shown that federally funded universities accepted more than $6.8 billion from “Communist China — including more than $300 million from sanctioned entities.”

Cotton is right to go after them for this.

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The AI Race With China Is a Lie Told by Big Tech to Justify the Data Center Invasion

As Big Tech races to build water-guzzling, energy-hungry data centers for its artificial intelligence, talk of an “AI race” between the United States and China has permeated public discourse. Pundits, politicians, and the media have all joined tech corporations in selling this narrative. And it’s giving license to Big Tech and their political handmaidens to ruin our communities, exploit our every action (both online and via AI-powered surveillance), and steal the wealth of human knowledge for private gain.

But the idea of an AI race between China and the US isn’t grounded in reality. The researchers, companies, and governments behind Chinese and US AI development are pursuing completely different goals.

The discourse in the US assumes that achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI)—computers that mimic human consciousness—would be so momentous and earth-shattering that clearly this must be the goal of anyone pursuing AI development. But that’s not the main goal of Chinese AI development. And a competition in which the competitors are running toward different finish lines isn’t a race.

If we allow the myth of an AI race with China to give Big Tech free rein, we face a more polluted, less equal world.

A Race Doesn’t Have Two Different Finish Lines

While the US is focused on artificial general intelligence (AGI) powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), Chinese developers are focused on AI embedded in products. It’s ChatGPT versus robots.

Yes, China is developing LLMs, although largely in an open-source way as opposed to the for-profit competition in the US. Recent news stories report that China is “catching” the US in LLM development. Indeed, the latest Chinese model outperforms leading US models. But this isn’t evidence of an LLM-AGI race. Instead, it shows that without making AGI its main focus, China is capable of developing its own models almost as quickly as US companies.

More to the point, LLM development in China is incidental to the country’s real goal for AI. Its focus remains on products embedded with AI and robots. Or, as AI policy researcher Liang Zheng says, in China, “The first priority is to use it to benefit ordinary people” (debatable, but indicates the kind of AI they are pursuing).

In the US, the first priority is to exploit people so that the tech oligarchs can profit. It’s chatbots all the way down.

This isn’t to argue that China is doing it “right” and the US is doing it “wrong.” Either approach will lead to a future in which citizens become increasingly disempowered. In which work becomes more scarce and less lucrative for most people. And in which a handful of billionaires grow wealthier and more powerful.

But the arguments being hauled out to support the destructive growth of hyperscale data centers are based on a fallacy. There is no need to “beat China.” China and the US are racing on separate tracks, in different races, with different finish lines.

These two separate approaches also explain the mind-boggling scale of the data center invasion we currently face. The massive hyperscale data centers—recent proposals would demand up to 5 gigawatts, enough electricity to power roughly 3.75 million US households—are only “required” because the US is racing toward AGI. Meanwhile, the embodied AI dominating in China does not require the same amount of computational power.

The truth is, we don’t need hyperscale data centers to “beat China.” We aren’t racing China. We’re killing ourselves so Silicon Valley can race itself.

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China: Six-Year-Old Girl Subjected to Brain Gene-Editing Therapy Dies After Being Injected with Viruses

Neuroscientist Qiu Zilong of Shanghai Jiao Tong University is under investigation following the death of a six-year-old girl who was receiving gene-editing therapy during a human trial under his supervision. 

The child was administered an experimental treatment that involved injecting “trillions of viruses carrying the recipe for the base editor into her spinal fluid,” according to a report in Science magazine. 

Science told the heartbreaking story of how the girl bounced into Xinhua Hospital in Shanghai in March 2025, wearing “a pink jacket and blue pants decorated with cartoon bears.” She treated her visit to the hospital as if it were a vacation and her parents were confident she would receive the best of care at the hospital’s acclaimed pediatrics ward.

The child was suffering from a genetic mutation that was interfering with her cognitive development. The experimental cure involved using a gene editor — similar to the fabled CRISPR, but more advanced — to rewrite the mutated gene in her nervous system. The little girl became the first human being to undergo gene-editing therapy for her brain, an experimental procedure that cost over $860,000.

The details of what happened next have been kept secret until now by the arrogant Chinese Communist tyranny, which is very eager to displace the United States as the world’s leading biotech power. 

According to research by Science and Retraction Watch, a watchdog group that follows up on failed experiments and retracted scientific research, the hospital used a fast-track bureaucratic procedure that bypassed national regulations and Qiu and his team severely undersold the risks of the procedure to the girl’s parents. When the truth was finally revealed, international experts said the negative reactions observed during animal testing should have prevented the experimental treatment from advancing to human trials.

The process of gene editing involves using tailored viruses to deliver the altered genetic material to a patient’s cells — and the little girl had a fatal immune reaction to the bewildering cocktail of viruses injected into her spinal column. She died seven days after entering the hospital.

A hideous cover-up ensued, erasing all mention of the little girl and her fate from experimental literature. Most shockingly, Qiu and his team published an article about the animal studies in their gene-editing trial at Nature this year, but without telling the full story of the human child who died from the treatment or the enormous financial contributions her family made to the research.

Science noted that the hospital paid only a “modest fine to a local health authority” after the death of the child and Qiu was not publicly sanctioned until now. The girl’s parents said they came forward due to their anger at the lack of accountability although they still felt it was necessary to use pseudonyms.

“Learning the reality of these missing safeguards has fundamentally changed how we now view the entire project. We did not realize how unusual and dangerous many of the arrangements were,” said the girl’s father, a software engineer who asked to be called “Jason” in the story.

Dr. Qiu was another in a series of Chinese scientists who came to the United States for an education, then returned to Communist China in 2009, “as China was ramping up its efforts to lure its scientists back home.” 

Qiu was, somewhat ironically, an outspoken critic of “rogue geneticist” He Jiankui’s experiments using CRISPR to create genetically engineered human babies, but he still felt there was great potential in using gene editing techniques to address neurological disorders. His papers and video presentations caught the attention of “Jason” and his wife, who emailed the doctor in 2023 to say they were “willing and able to bear the costs” of getting his experimental treatment for their child. He responded to their inquiry in thirteen minutes flat.

Over the course of the next two years, Jason said he came under increasing pressure to pump money into the research, sometimes in dubious ways, such as paying members of his research team directly and informally.

The cost of the treatment increased dramatically and Jason was told that if he stopped providing the funds, everything he had already paid would be for nothing. Chinese law forbids charging patients or their families for unproven therapies, but this prohibition was circumvented by treating the huge sums provided by Jason’s family as “contributions” to advanced medical research.

Jason and his wife recorded all of their conversation with Qiu and other researchers, so they had a mountain of evidence to bring to the table when they decided to go public.

The general consensus from Science and its researchers is that serious medical work was conducted. The research was not a scam operation and Qiu does not appear to have taken any great portion of the money for himself, although he accepted some lavish gifts from the family. The researchers appeared to be reckless, disregarding evidence that their experimental treatment was dangerous and failing to take some precautions that might have been helpful, such as using more powerful preparatory drugs to suppress the little girl’s immune system.

Science and Retraction Watch referred to the case of “Baby KJ,” a Philadelphia boy named KJ Muldoon with a rare life-threatening metabolic condition that was saved by the world’s first personalized gene-editing treatment in 2025. Baby KJ’s landmark treatment and recovery were the kind of success Jason wanted for his child which Qiu evidently thought he could provide.

Jason referred to his child as “Mei,” a Chinese word that means “beauty.” The last week of her life was a terrible ordeal as her immune system fought to the death against the gene-editing viruses and lost. She began running a fever that Dr. Qiu confidently, and incorrectly, predicted would pass. Her kidneys failed, so she could not have any fluids. Qiu seemed baffled by her deteriorating condition.

In the aftermath of Mei’s death, her parents asked Qiu not to publish the paper he had been excitedly preparing for Nature, but he did it anyway — after removing the genetic data collected from Mei and her family and deleting a message of thanks to them.

Some of the international scientists who were excited by Qiu’s paper were later angry to discover he had already administered the experimental treatment to a young human patient who did not survive. Nature’s editors were annoyed to learn Qiu had not told them the full story before publication.

Qiu’s company had an insurance policy for the medical trial, but Mei’s parents received no settlement. Her shattered parents blamed themselves for not asking enough questions and apparently could not bear to speak with the friends who helped pay for Mei’s treatment.

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Sunday that Shanghai Jia Tong University has “established a special group to investigate” Qiu’s clinical study and the paper he published at Nature.

“The medicine school has always valued research integrity and standards, and resolutely opposes medical research that violates research ethics and regulations,” the university said.

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