It is not clear that the US will be able to apprehend him, however, given that Washington suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong in August after Beijing imposed the national security law.

“Ng conspired to steal valuable and sensitive technology from GE and produce it in China,” said Thomas Relford, a special agent with the FBI’s Albany field office. “Theft of trade secrets is a constant and dangerous threat to our American companies.”

Ng planned the alleged theft, along with a GE engineer who had worked with the company for over seven years, to steal technology called MOSFET – for metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor – and other proprietary information, the agency said. It was not clear why the engineer, called “co-conspirator No 1” was not identified.

MOSFET is a type of transistor often made of silicon and commonly used in automobile electronics, including the power converters used in electronic vehicles. The GE secrets were allegedly incorporated into PowerPoint presentations as part of a business plan shopped to prospective investors.

US engineer charged with stealing GE trade secrets for China

The Justice Department said that the pair told potential investors their business could be profitable within three years and that their start-up company had tangible and intangible assets worth an estimated US$100 million. Ng and the GE engineer were seeking some US$30 million in exchange for shares in their start-up venture.

According to a LinkedIn profile of someone with the same name, Ng has been a vice-president of Tianyu Semiconductor Technology based in Guangdong since 2015. He describes himself as a “strategic thinker with strong leadership skills” possessing “strong business acumen” and a “passion to succeed”.

The Justice Department said it had no evidence that any technology was actually transferred to China.

In 2018, the agency, working with the FBI, launched a “China Initiative” aimed at countering the theft of trade secrets and national intelligence from companies, universities and government agencies. Since then, it claims that it has opened a new case every 10 hours on average.

As Beijing’s wealth, ambition and obsession with technological achievement have increased, so too has its appetite and budget for acquiring foreign technology, whether through legitimate or illegitimate means.

Advocacy groups have pushed for an end to the initiative, however, arguing that it unfairly targets Asian-Americans and sometimes produces indictments only to see cases quietly dropped a few months later.

According to the indictment, Ng and the GE engineer tried to start a company to make and sell MOSFET transistors starting in March 2017. The led to a meeting in China in August 2017 in which they allegedly gave presentations to a Chinese investment company considering taking a stake in the start-up.

Chinese spy caught in ‘rare’ sting after ‘plot to steal US trade secrets’

“Winsman Ng and his co-conspirators allegedly chose to steal what they lacked the time, talent or money to create,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers said in a statement. “The department will do all it can to disrupt this illegal and economically destructive conduct.”

Ng’s is the latest in a series of indictments of China-connected individuals alleged to have tried to steal technology from GE and other aerospace companies. In 2018, the Justice Department publicised the “unprecedented” extradition of an official with China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) for allegedly attempting to steal trade secrets from GE Aviation and other US aerospace companies after luring the suspect to Belgium.

Two weeks later, the department indicted a group of 10 people, allegedly led by MSS agents, who tried to hack into the computer systems of a US company and a French company that manufacture turbofan engine parts.

Additional reporting by Robert Delaney