The State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA; ) was an agency of the government of the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

(PRC) that operated under the State Council and the

Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of People's Republic of China is a ministry under the State Council of China which is responsible for national labor policies, standards, regulations and managing the national social security. ...

. It was responsible for recruiting foreign experts outside of mainland China - including Taiwan and the

special administrative regions The special administrative regions (SAR) of the People's Republic of China are one of the provincial-level administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China directly under the control of its Central People's Government (State Co ...

- for work in the PRC, and managing the training of Chinese nationals outside of the PRC. It was headquartered in

Zhongguancun Zhongguancun () is a major technology hub in Haidian District, Beijing, China. Zhongguancun occupies a band between the northwestern Third Ring Road and the northwestern Fourth Ring Road, in the northwestern part of Beijing. Zhongguancun is ...

Haidian District Haidian District () is a district of the municipality of Beijing. It is mostly situated in northwestern Beijing, but also to a lesser extent in the west, where it has borders with Xicheng District and Fengtai District. It is 431 square km in ar ...

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...

. SAFEA founded in 1956 and abolished in March 2018, when its functions were absorbed by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST). The SAFEA name was retained to interact with foreign parties.

Recruitment

The fields targeted for foreign recruitment included the economy, technology, management, education, engineering, science, culture, and healthcare. Foreigners usually worked in foreign invested joint-ventures, private industry, state-owned enterprises and public construction projects.

Programs and organizations supervised

Thousand Talents Plan The Thousand Talents Plan or Thousand Talents Program (TTP) (), or Overseas High-Level Talent Recruitment Programs () is a program by the central government of China to recruit experts in science and technology from abroad, principally but not ex ...

(TTP) * China International Talent Exchange Foundation (CITEF) * China Association for International Exchange of Personnel (CAIEP) *China Services International * Conference on International Exchange of Professionals

Partnerships

SAFEA maintains partnerships with universities and professional bodies in several countries, including: *

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

* Project Management Institute

Reaction

According to the 1999

Cox Report The Report of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, commonly known as the Cox Report after Representative Christopher Cox, is a classified U.S. government docum ...

, SAFEA's CAIEP is "one of several organizations set up by the PRC for illicit

technology transfer Technology transfer (TT), also called transfer of technology (TOT), is the process of transferring (disseminating) technology from the person or organization that owns or holds it to another person or organization, in an attempt to transform invent ...

through contacts with Western scientists and engineers." In March 2022, a federal jury convicted a man of fraudulently obtaining U.S. visas for CAIEP employees. A 2019 report by the

United States Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), stood up in March 1941 as the "Truman Committee," is the oldest subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (formerly the Committee on Governme ...

stated that SAFEA's contracts with foreign experts "include provisions that violate U.S. standards of research integrity, place TTP members in compromising legal and ethical positions, and undermine fundamental U.S. scientific norms of transparency, reciprocity, and integrity." SAFEA has been the subject of

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...

investigations. In 2010, Noshir Gowadia was convicted for selling classified information, primarily regarding the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit, to a SAFEA official. SAFEA has been reported to operate nominally private

front organizations A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, terrorist organizations, secret societies, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy ...

such as Virginia-based Triway Enterprises.

References

External links