Feds warn: China sending ‘thousands’ of spies to US colleges

Chinese intelligence services have sent “thousands” of people to U.S. colleges under the guise of college students and professors, federal officials said.

“We want to encourage people to come here and study,” Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, told reporters Friday. “This isn’t about targeting everyone who’s a Chinese national. But there are thousands who are directly linked to a state-sponsored effort to steal intellectual property.”

That warning underscores the scope of China’s “economic espionage,” as the Justice Department terms it, as a tool for national security and economic threat. That threat is part of a broader effort by Beijing to take advantage of American colleges and universities, which provoked a backlash among U.S. officials.

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