China says engineer jailed for 15 years was lured into sending aerospace secrets overseas

An aerospace engineer has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for espionage, Chinese state media said while warning that the aerospace industry is a cornerstone of national technological strength and defence security.The engineer surnamed Zhu graduated from a top university with a PhD in 2018, state broadcaster CCTV said on Monday. Since then, he has worked as an engineer in multiple aerospace research institutes and handled classified documents in the aerospace and defence industries.During that time, spies from an unnamed country reached out to him, the report said. CCTV said that despite knowing they were spies, Zhu used their equipment to photograph many documents and other materials and transmitted them to the unnamed agency, illegally earning 596,400 yuan (US$88,000), it said. In addition to being sentenced to 15 years in prison, all his belongings were confiscated.