US court upholds longer sentence for China tech export professor

A federal appeals court has upheld an 85-month prison sentence for Yi-Chi Shih, a former UCLA electrical engineering professor convicted of illegally exporting sensitive microwave technology to China.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled, 25 October, that the district court had correctly applied a higher sentencing guideline to Shih’s case, finding that his actions constituted evasion of national security controls rather than mere regulatory violations.

Shih was found guilty of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (‘IEEPA’) by arranging the manufacture and export of specialised microwave circuits to China Avionics Systems Co. Limited (‘AVIC’), a company involved in developing military weapons.

‘It is undisputed that Shih had business dealings with a Chinese company whose business involved missiles,’ the court noted in its opinion.

The case centred on Shih’s scheme to obtain monolithic microwave integrated circuits (‘MMICs’) from Cree, a US-based manufacturer. According to court documents, Shih concealed his involvement by having a co-conspirator, Kiet Mai, submit the order. Shih falsely claimed on export questionnaires that the components would not be subject to export controls and marked ‘N/A’ when asked if the products would be shipped outside the United States.

The appeals court rejected Shih’s argument that the export controls he violated were merely for foreign policy reasons rather than national security. It noted that the US Bureau of Industry and Security (‘BIS’) had specifically listed national security among the reasons for controlling these components, along with missile technology, nuclear nonproliferation and anti-terrorism concerns.

The decision maintains the 85-month concurrent sentences imposed on Shih for conspiracy and violation of the IEEPA, along with lesser concurrent sentences on sixteen other counts.

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2024/10/25/23-3718.pdf