There are very few details about the charges yet, but from what's been said so far, this case looks disturbingly similar to recent cases in the US, in which innocent scientists were accused of espionage.
The most prominent person targeted in the US was the head of MIT's mechanical engineering program, Gang Chen. As you can imagine, the head of MIT MechEng is very highly respected in his field, so the FBI's case against him was a shock to people in the field. Unusually for such cases, MIT stuck up for Gang Chen, and the FBI eventually had to drop the case. There was simply nothing there in the end. The whole case was built out of thin air and implausible misreadings of harmless emails.
But before the FBI dropped the case, they made Gang Chen's life hell for a year. They carried out an early morning armed raid on his house, and arrested him at gunpoint in front of his family, as if he were some sort of terrorist or drug lord. They gave a big press conference in which they labeled him a Chinese spy. He wasn't allowed to continue his work, so he had to let his lab go. At the end of the whole ordeal, he said it reminded him of the Cultural Revolution in China, which he had personally experienced.
The most prominent person targeted in the US was the head of MIT's mechanical engineering program, Gang Chen. As you can imagine, the head of MIT MechEng is very highly respected in his field, so the FBI's case against him was a shock to people in the field. Unusually for such cases, MIT stuck up for Gang Chen, and the FBI eventually had to drop the case. There was simply nothing there in the end. The whole case was built out of thin air and implausible misreadings of harmless emails.
But before the FBI dropped the case, they made Gang Chen's life hell for a year. They carried out an early morning armed raid on his house, and arrested him at gunpoint in front of his family, as if he were some sort of terrorist or drug lord. They gave a big press conference in which they labeled him a Chinese spy. He wasn't allowed to continue his work, so he had to let his lab go. At the end of the whole ordeal, he said it reminded him of the Cultural Revolution in China, which he had personally experienced.