On Thursday, a woman named Wenxia Man was convicted in a Florida court of conspiring to evade U.S. export laws by illegally acquiring and sending fighter jet engines and drones to China

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China appears to be going to great lengths to get its hands on high-tech U.S. jet engines to beef up its military capabilities.

On Thursday, a woman named Wenxia Man was convicted in a Florida court of conspiring to evade U.S. export laws by illegally acquiring and sending fighter jet engines and drones to China, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Prosecutors said Man was working with an associate in China to buy and export engines made by Pratt & Whitney and General Electric (GE), which are found in a range of top U.S. military aircraft, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the F-22 and the F-16 fighter jets. She was also found to have tried to export a General Atomics drone, and technical data for the different hardware items.

During the investigation, Man referred to her associate as a spy “who worked on behalf of the Chinese military to copy items obtained from other countries and stated that he was particularly interested in stealth technology,” the Department of Justice said.

The conviction of Man is the latest development in an ongoing saga of corporate espionage between the U.S. and China. Experts say spying has played a role in China’s strategy to modernize the country in recent decades. The illicit acquisition of technology has helped China accelerate the process, bypassing problems that would otherwise require years of research and development to resolve, according to analysts.
But Beijing has repeatedly denied that it engages in corporate espionage.

Read More: CNN

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