'Don't politicize,' Beijing tells Canada after Chinese researcher held on 'spying' charges

Beijing on Tuesday urged against politicizing the arrest of a Chinese employee in Canada on alleged spying charges.

Canada should "handle the case according to law rather than politicize it," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said in response to a question about the arrest of a Hydro-Quebec employee and researcher charged with spying for China on Monday.

Yuesheng Wang, 35, who worked in the area of batteries, was arrested at his home in Candiac, Quebec, following an investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Wang is charged with four counts: obtaining trade secrets through fraud, unauthorized computer use, breach of trust by a public officer, and obtaining trade secrets. The latter is a charge under the Security of Information Act that concerns national security.

The RCMP said this is the first time a charge of obtaining trade secrets has been brought under the act.

"This investigation is very significant and sends a clear message," said Inspector David Beaudoin, who leads the RCMP's Integrated National Security Enforcement team, which conducted the investigation. "We do believe the investigation shows that the actions undertaken by Mr. Wang are criminal in nature," he asserted.

The alleged crimes were committed between Feb. 2018 and Oct. 2022.

Wang is said to have published “secret material” – academic papers and patents – in Chinese universities.

He was fired from Hydro-Quebec, where he worked as a researcher in the Center of Excellence in Transportation Electrification and Energy Storage, where he worked on battery research.

Wang is said to have been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arkansas and a visiting researcher at Queen Mary University in London before joining Hydro-Quebec in October 2016.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the death sentence pronounced by a Pakistani court on terrorists behind the Dasu attack that killed 13 people, including nine Chinese, on July 14 last year, was “justice served.”

Twenty-three others were injured.

Last week, an Anti-Terrorism Court in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province sentenced to death the perpetrators of a suicide attack on a bus carrying Chinese engineers in Kohistan last year.

Mao said Beijing will “invest more resources to protect overseas Chinese,” the Chinese daily Global Times reported.

The court found Mohammad Hussain and Mohammad Ayaz of Swat district guilty of "planning the bus bombing."