Silicon Valley Spy Case Links ZTE, PLA to Stolen US Technology

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China's major telecommunications firm ZTE was offered stolen American wireless technology used in filtering electronic signals from cell phones and military communications, according to court documents in a Chinese government-linked economic spy case.

A document in the trade secrets theft case of Tianjin University professor Zhang Hao states that Zhang in 2011 emailed a representative of ZTE, China's second-largest telecommunications company and sent a PowerPoint slide containing proprietary information prosecutors say was stolen from the U.S. high-technology company Avago Technologies.

Zhang and five other Chinese nationals were indicted in April 2015 on charges of economic espionage and trade secrets theft involving Avago and another U.S. tech company, Skyworks Solutions, Inc. Avago, based in San Jose, was a leading designer, developer, and supplier of analog, digital, mixed-signal, and optoelectronics components using semiconductors.

The stolen trade secrets resulted in the Chinese government university building a state-of-the-art FBAR fabrication facility that provided components to Chinese state companies and two military institutes.