Evidence first. Conclusions no broader than the record.

Purpose and scope

What the project studies

We document episodes in which technology, intellectual property, research, industrial processes, samples, source code, suppliers, know-how, or competitive advantage moved to an individual or organization in China through theft, deception, unauthorized copying, insider conduct, cyber activity, coercive or exploitative commercial leverage, undisclosed conflicts, or lawful-but-strategically-harmful learning.

Cases can involve companies, universities, state bodies, military organizations, individuals, informal networks, or combinations of them. Inclusion is based on documented conduct and relevance—not ethnicity or nationality alone.

The inclusion floor

A case requires a named event, identifiable actors or institutions, a specific asset or capability, a discernible transfer or attempted-transfer mechanism, and at least one public source that can be evaluated. Publication ordinarily requires a court document, signed admission, official finding, or multiple independent and credible sources.

We do not publish rumor-only entries, anonymous accusations without corroboration, generalized claims about Chinese people, or a guilt-by-association chain in which affiliation substitutes for evidence of conduct.

Source hierarchy

1. Primary adjudicative records: opinions, judgments, verdicts, plea agreements, signed factual statements, and final agency findings.
2. Primary procedural records: indictments, complaints, warrants, motions, sanctions notices, and official attribution statements. These establish what was alleged or attributed, not guilt.
3. Direct institutional records: regulatory filings, audited disclosures, technical reports, patents, company statements, and university records. Interested-party claims are labeled.
4. Reputable reporting and research: used to corroborate, contextualize, or identify records; material contested claims should not rest on a single secondary account when primary records are available.

Two independent labels

Every file carries an evidence status for the conduct and a separate PRC-state nexus label. A criminal conviction can coexist with “no state nexus established.” A state link can be officially attributed while the underlying charge remains unadjudicated. We do not collapse the two questions.

Claim-level sourcing

Material factual statements carry source markers linked to the file’s source record. Quantified harm is labeled as a court finding, documented value, attributed estimate, potential harm, or unknown. Analytic leadership lessons are explicitly identified as hindsight analysis.

Visual evidence and contextual images

Case files prioritize photographs that reliably identify the named people, followed by images of the organizations, technology, or operating environment. Subject photographs must come from a court, law-enforcement or government publication, an employer or institutional profile, the subject's own public profile, or attributable editorial reporting. A court case alone does not mean a portrait or booking photograph was released, and we do not use an unverified search-result match to fill that gap.

Every visual carries a creator or institutional credit, source link, descriptive alternative text, caption, and rights basis. Public-domain and openly licensed images are preferred. Limited case-specific editorial imagery is used when it materially helps readers identify a central subject and its source and copyright status are made explicit. A caption states when an image is contextual rather than a photograph, exhibit, or document from the case; contextual imagery is never presented as proof of the underlying conduct.

Names and responses

We name individuals and institutions when the identity is public, relevant, and supported by the cited record. We include acquittals, dismissals, reversals, commutations, later civil orders, and meaningful denials or procedural arguments. A charging document is never silently rewritten as a finding.

Review and correction

Every file records a last-reviewed and next-review date. Developing cases receive shorter review intervals. Material changes are reflected in the case status and updates log. Substantiated corrections are made visibly; the correction process is described on the corrections page.

Limits

Public records are incomplete. Absence of a documented state nexus is not proof that none existed; a documented affiliation or funding relationship is not proof of state direction. Legal outcomes can change. Estimated harm can mix direct loss, market reaction, opportunity cost, and victim attribution. Each file states these boundaries rather than resolving them through implication.