(A recent photo of Zhang Hao, who has now been trapped in the United States for four years.) Courtesy of Zhang Hao's wife Fan Liping)
(Zhang Hao's physical and mental state is not very good, and he often loses sleep and vomits.) Courtesy of Zhang Hao's wife Fan Liping)
After four years, the case of Zhang Hao, a professor at Tianjin University who was arrested by the United States for "fishing law enforcement" and put on the hat of a spy, has finally made new progress recently. According to the Global Times reporter, after many delays by the US side, Zhang Hao's case is finally scheduled to be heard in a district court in the United States on September 10, and the final judgment is expected to be made in a few days or longer. At the same time, Zhang Hao's North (Tianjin) Microsystem Co., Ltd. has launched a legal offensive in China against an american "protagonist" in the incident, Anhua High-Tech Company (now renamed Broadcom).
After investigation, the Global Times reporter was even more surprised to find that in the past four years, the United States has laid down countless "black hands" to manipulate Zhang Hao's case: forging evidence, stealing secrets through hackers invading the network system of Tianjin University, "packaging" public knowledge into so-called "trade secrets", and a large web that has been premeditated... The real purpose of the United States against Zhang Hao gradually surfaced. Zhang Hao, who is in the center of the whirlpool, has been stranded alone in a foreign country for four years and has not been able to return to China. His wife told the Global Times that Zhang Hao was still convinced of his innocence, but that his long life under house arrest had made his physical and mental deterioration.
(Mechatronic Laboratory, Tianjin University.) Photo by Bai Yunyi)
North Company counterclaims US companies: Who is the "technology thief"?
In May 2015, the United States arrested and accused Zhang Hao of "conspiracy to commit economic espionage," arguing that Zhang Hao and his colleague Pang Wei had stolen information about the filter chips of industry giant Anwar Hi-Tech while working in the United States, and brought them back to Tianjin University to create a joint venture company, North Microsystems, and then sold the chips produced by North to Chinese state agencies and some companies.
However, an insider close to Zhang Hao and North told the Global Times reporter on the 23rd that North has counter-sued the filter chip sold by Avago to Apple in the United States for infringing the intellectual property rights of North and Zhang Hao in the Tianjin Municipal Intermediate Court.
According to the person familiar with the matter, Zhang Hao and his colleague Pang Wei were already leaders in the field of microelectromechanical filter chips when they were in the United States, and were approved by the US patent department and obtained 7 patents in the United States. After the two entered Tianda and established North, Tianda and North obtained more than 200 patents in this field. In 2016, North discovered that the filter chips sold by Avago to Apple used patented technology developed by Pang Wei and Zhang Hao, and disassembled Apple's handheld devices for evidence. On September 28, 2017, North filed a lawsuit against Apple in the Tianjin First Intermediate Court.
(Zhang Hao before his arrest.) The first on the left is Zhang Hao, and the second on the left is Pang Wei. From the network. )
"North has great confidence that it can win this case," the person told reporters, "because all the evidence is in North's favor." ”
However, the move was quickly met with a strong backlash from Apple and Avago. "After North launched the lawsuit, the other party said that it was seeking an out-of-court settlement, but North refused." The person revealed to the Global Times that subsequently, Apple appealed on the grounds that there were problems with the jurisdiction of the case, which was also rejected by the Tianjin High Court.
Seeing that they had failed to achieve their goals, in 2018, Avago and Apple embarked on a "delaying strategy": Anhuagao sued Zhang Hao and North in the Tianjin First Intermediate Court for problems with the ownership of their patents, while Apple sued the State Intellectual Property Office of China in the Beijing Intellectual Property Court to declare Zhang Hao and North's patents invalid. Because the two cases have not yet been completed, the Tianjin Municipal First Intermediate People's Court temporarily suspended the trial of the North v. Apple infringement case last year.
"North and Tianda hope that the judiciary can hear these three parallel cases at the same time and have a fair outcome as soon as possible." The person familiar with the matter said, "They firmly believe that there is sufficient evidence to win the case, and this can also help Zhang Hao's trial in the United States." ”
Hackers steal, create perjury... In the past four years, what "black hands" has the United States laid down in the Zhang Hao case?
As we all know, in 2015, Zhang Hao was lured to the United States by the US side in the name of participating in an academic conference and arrested in the form of "fishing law enforcement". However, the "hands and feet" of the United States in this case are far more than this, and with the passage of time, they have also surfaced.
An informed source close to Zhang Hao told the Global Times reporter on the 23rd that the key evidence provided by Anhua High-tech Company to the US court and the Chinese court was dozens of emails exchanged between Zhang Hao and Pang Wei, which the company said involved trade secrets. However, most of these emails are stored in the mail servers of Tianjin University, which were illegally obtained by US hackers who invaded tianda's network system. In addition, these messages have obvious traces of editing and modification.
Tianjin University invited a number of technical experts from well-known universities and institutions in China to identify the emails provided by Avago, and these experts came to a consensus after analyzing them, believing that these were not the original emails, but were edited and modified. This is obvious perjury. He told reporters.
Another important basis for the US side to label Zhang Hao a "spy" is the report of a so-called "Chinese linguist and Chinese military expert" named James Malvernon. The Global Times reporter noted that the report ridiculously claimed that Both Tianjin University and North Company, where Zhang Hao worked, were "Chinese government agencies" on the grounds that Tianjin University was affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education, which controlled the funding and subsidy distribution of Chinese universities. North is a joint venture with Tianda and is also a branch of the Chinese government.
In fact, Tianda has only 7% stake in North, and Malvernon's understanding of the Chinese system is very crude and absurd. It is worth mentioning that Malvenon was one of the concoctors of the "high theory" that "China's Shandong Lanxiang Technical School is a network hacking base in the United States", which is actually a Chinese employment training institution known for teaching cooking techniques and excavator driving.
Not only that, but even long before the "fishing law enforcement" trapped Zhang Hao, the United States began to quietly weave this "big net" in the form of deception. According to the Global Times, in 2012, Anhuagao executive Richie Ruby visited the micro-electromechanical laboratory of Tianjin University in the name of academic exchanges, and offered to publish papers with Tianda and cooperate in patent applications. "At that time, the Tianda personnel were completely defenseless psychologically, and asked Ruby to guide and report for the students, but only rejected Ruby's proposal to provide scientific research funds and inject funds to acquire North."
But unexpectedly, the purpose of The Rupee's trip was not so simple. Immediately after returning home, the man submitted a report to the FBI, exaggerating and untruely describing "China's complete replication of Avago's filter chip production line at Tianjin University" and repeatedly asking the FBI to intervene in the matter. "In fact, Tianda's laboratory is only two hundred square meters, and the gap between the scale of Tens of Thousands of Square Meters and Anhua's high cannot be counted." The equipment used is not as the rupee describes, more than 70% of which is purchased at a lower price for second-hand equipment for students to practice. The person revealed that many subsequent indications show that the person is inextricably linked to the FBI.
Why did the United States set up such a big bureau against Zhang Hao and North? Perhaps the answer lies in North's main product, the filter chip. Filter chip technology is regarded as the "crown jewel" of the chip semiconductor industry, and it is also the core and cornerstone of modern wireless communications, 5G, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and all these industries. To this day, the technology has been almost monopolized by Anwar High Tech in the United States. However, Tianjin University and North have become China's leading and internationally competitive filter chip research and development institutions, and have formed a small batch supply market production capacity, which is of great significance to China's chip industry to break through the blockade and suppression.
Zhang Hao at the center of the whirlpool: Four years of exoticism under pressure and loneliness
The Global Times reporter met Zhang Hao's wife and father last weekend. Zhang Hao's wife, Fan Liping, told reporters that the delay in the trial of the case has brought great psychological pressure to Zhang Hao. She showed reporters a recent photo of Zhang Hao, in which Zhang Hao appeared tired and haggard, and was sentenced to two people four years ago. Fan Liping said that in addition to worrying about the case, Zhang Hao is also particularly worried about his elderly parents. Last year, Zhang Mu had several serious illnesses, and in the first half of this year, Zhang Father suddenly had a large-scale cerebral infarction, and he could not return to China to take care of it, and he felt very painful and self-blamed in his heart.
Zhang Hao has no medical insurance in the United States, and the local medical costs are very expensive, so he has always insisted on relieving stress by running. But since the beginning of this year, Zhang Hao's physical condition has seriously declined. "He often has insomnia at night and vomits easily when he eats, so he does not dare to eat." His physique is also getting weaker and weaker, and he used to be able to run more than ten kilometers, but now he is so weak that he can't hold on to hundreds of meters. Fan Liping said that Zhang Hao is currently allowed to move around Northern California from 7 to 21:00, wear electronic monitoring equipment, and report regularly to the judge.
Fan Liping said that after consulting doctors, psychological stress and loneliness for too long may be the main reasons for Zhang Hao's decline in physical condition. She told reporters that at the end of 2016 and 2017, the US side had said that it would hold a trial, but then it failed for various reasons, "each time a stop for at least half a year." Especially in the second half of 2018, the progress of the case was almost out of a state of "complete shutdown", "far away, so that people can't see hope at all".
Progress in Zhang Hao's case stalled at a time when tensions between China and the United States are intensifying. In recent years, Chinese researchers in the United States have been frequently suppressed, and more and more people have been censored, expelled, questioned, and even prosecuted for arrest. According to Fan Liping, when she went to visit Zhang Hao in and out of U.S. customs, she often encountered biased inquiries, "such as asking me if I was Huawei." Fearing that communication devices would be monitored by the United States, Fan Liping and her family often had to turn off their phones.
Zhang Hao's case not only greatly affected his personal academic career, but also caused a big blow to the development of Tianjin University and North. Zhang Hao's colleague Duan Xuexin at Tianjin University told the Global Times that the Tianda School of Precision Instruments and Optoelectronics Engineering has almost completely suspended research in the direction of microelectromechanical technology that Zhang Hao previously specialized in. Due to the impact of Zhang Hao's case, North Company also encountered great difficulties in financing, and was regarded by capital as "there is a higher risk". According to the reporter's understanding, now North's salary for employees is already struggling to support.
On September 10, Zhang's case will finally open in the San Jose Branch of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Wang Hailong, secretary of the Party Committee of the School of Precision Instruments and Optoelectronics Engineering of Tianjin University, told the Global Times that Tianjin University will continue to be a strong backing for Professor Zhang Hao and help and support Professor Zhang Hao in his lawsuit.
"In the past four years, I have had many dreams that my son fell into the water and I was going to save him." Zhang Hao's father, Zhang Jiaqi, sighed to the Global Times reporter, "I only hope that Zhang Hao can win the case and return safely as soon as possible." In the future, even if you become a normal teacher, you will never go to the United States again. ”