Water Scientists Caught in Chinese Corruption

Anti-corruption Campaign Has Charged that Seven Leading Scientists from Five Universities Allegedly Misused Government Research Grants, Including a Major Project for Water-pollution Remediation of Lake Tai, a Large Freshwater Lake Near Shanghai

The announcement follows an investigation by the National Audit Office (NAO) of more than a dozen engineering and applied-research ‘megaprojects'. Together, the projects receive a whopping $8 billion a year in funding.

Five projects are singled out in the government report: transgenic technology; water-pollution remediation of Lake Tai, a large freshwater lake near Shanghai; drug discovery; prevention and control of infectious diseases; and development of electronic devices.

According to the report, six of the scientists are being detained, and two of them — Chen Yingxu, a former vice-president of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, and Song Maoqiang, an electronic engineer at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications — already pleaded guilty after a hearing earlier this year.

According to reports by Xinhua, China's state news agency, both Chen, who headed the water-remediation project, and Song, who led the effort to develop cutting-edge electronic devices, have each received ten-year prison terms for diverting research funds of $1.5 million and $111,000, respectively, for their personal use.

The science ministry has also alleged serious financial irregularities — such as forging of receipts and invoices and use of funds for inappropriate purposes — at more than 20 other universities and institutes. These include prestigious institutions such as the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences' Biotechnology Research Institute, both in Beijing, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Academician system under fire

One of the six scientists under arrest is Li Ning, an animal-cloning researcher at the China Agricultural University in Beijing and a principal investigator in the transgenic-technology project. He is the first academician (elected fellow) of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) to be implicated in an alleged embezzlement case.

Despite the magnitude of the alleged embezzlement, it seems that few Chinese researchers are surprised by the NAO's findings. "Many scientists take a rather ‘flexible' approach towards using their grants," says Duan Yibing, a science-policy researcher at the CAS Institute of Policy and Management in Beijing.

Source: Nature

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