Meet Dr. Yan: A Symbol of America’s Failed Response to China’s Research Security Threat

China’s malign activities against the U.S. often take vivid forms, including a spy balloon over critical U.S. military bases and CCP-controlled “police stations” operating in lower Manhattan to “threaten, harass, and intimidate those who speak against” the CCP.

China’s aggressive activities are alarming and the CCP’s continued access to emerging U.S. technologies at federally-funded research universities may be helping to build those capabilities.

On Dec. 10, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the University of Delaware (UD) would pay a $715,580.00 fine for failing to disclose a prominent UD researcher’s “affiliation with and support from” the Chinese government.

The UD professor on the NASA grant identified in the settlement agreement, Dr. Xiao-Hai Yan, was also a prominent research faculty member at Xiamen University who received substantial funding from the Chinese government and was a “Thousand Talent Program” (TTP) funding recipient.

According to the FBI, the CCP’s talent recruitment programs use “lucrative financial and research benefits” to access and acquire emerging U.S. technologies through U.S.-based research personnel, such as Dr. Yan.

Dr. Yan’s expertise in oceanography and remote sensing research was well known in China and the U.S., where he was a National Presidential Faculty Fellow at the National Science Foundation beginning in 1994. From 2002 through 2024, Dr. Yan was Director of UD’s Center for Remote Sensing (CRS) and was also the Associate Director for the NASA-Delaware Space Grant Consortium beginning in 2005 (to which NASA obligated nearly $10 million in federal grants and a cooperative agreement with UD).

On at least 28 federal research grants awarded to UD, Yan was the named principal or co-principal investigator, including for grants from NASA, the U.S. Navy, and NOAA.

For UD or any investigative agencies which might have been curious, Dr. Yan’s concurrent scientific prominence in China would have been obvious.

In 2007, Yan was named a “Distinguished Scholar” at Xiamen University and, between 2007 and 2022, he established a joint remote sensing research center between Xiamen University and UD, leading talent recruitment under the TTP, and constructing a satellite ground station at Xiamen University. His work, which included securing significant research funding and obtaining a PRC patent assigned to a sanctioned defense institute, often intersected with defense-related technologies and collaborations with researchers tied to state-owned enterprises like Spacety China, now sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for its role in providing satellite imagery to Russia for targeting Ukrainian infrastructure.

DOJ and NASA were right to investigate UD for its false certifications that NASA funding was not being used in scientific collaborations with China. During UD’s false certifications of its compliance with NASA’s Chinese Funding Restrictions, UD’s Yan was deeply and openly immersed in parallel research programs and scientific collaborations in China.

Yan’s extensive involvements in China were occurring in broad daylight, but it took years for federal investigators to confront UD, which eventually acknowledged Yan’s undisclosed involvements with China.

China’s penetration of our research universities isn’t unique to UD. In 2020, an internal investigation by the Texas A&M University System revealed that more than 100 STEM faculty had failed to disclose their participation in Chinese talent recruitment programs. UD and Texas A&M are hardly unique.

Through its extensive financial ties with our research universities, China has extraordinary access to what the U.S. Department of Education described in 2020 as “technological treasure troves, where leading and internationally competitive fields … are booming.”

China’s continuing nefarious activities notwithstanding, the Biden administration ended DOJ’s China Initiative. Since 2021, only a handful of comparable matters (Stanford University, University of Maryland, Cleveland Clinic Foundation) have been brought to fruition by federal investigators, despite widespread disclosure violations.

Failing to vigorously pursue these matters except in a very small number of cases, despite the urgency of the China threat, is a strategic error that needs correction.

President-elect Trump will soon have the opportunity to direct the Justice Department, FBI, and other investigative agencies to get serious about identifying the hidden involvements of prominent U.S.-funded university research personnel with Chinese researchers who may be providing critical technologies for the development of China’s emerging military threat against the U.S. and its allies.

Serious actions need to be taken so that the American people can know their tax dollars aren’t funding our foremost military adversary and that federal investigative agencies won’t be hamstrung by politicians who refuse to thwart China’s flagrant efforts to acquire our emerging technologies.