Accused of offering secrets to China | The lack of mastery of French at the heart of the trial
Even after six years at Hydro-Québec, researcher Yuesheng Wang remained incapable of understanding French. Could he therefore master the rules which governed his work? The question is at the heart of his trial for economic espionage, which has been held in Longueuil since last week.
What you need to know
- Yuesheng Wang, a former researcher at Hydro-Québec, is the first person charged with economic espionage under Canada’s Privacy Act.
- He is suspected of having offered valuable secrets about Quebec battery technologies to the People’s Republic of China.
- Mr. Wang was recruited in China in 2016 and fired in 2022. His inability to speak French has been raised since the start of the trial.
The prosecution’s thesis in this case is that Yuesheng Wang applied for jobs in Chinese research institutions, in order to return to his native country, while he worked for Hydro-Québec, in Varennes. In these service offers, he would have committed to helping China commercialize battery technologies linked to confidential research work at Hydro.
Mr. Wang was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in 2022, after a denunciation from Hydro-Québec’s corporate security services, who said they had noted several violations of internal rules governing the confidentiality of research projects. Colleagues had notably spotted scientific work published in China bearing the name of Yuesheng Wang.
Questioned by the RCMP at the time, Mr. Wang’s former superior, Karim Zaghib, explained to the police that he had recruited the researcher in China because of his great expertise, even if he considered that China could represent “a danger” for Quebec research projects.
In court on Wednesday, he did not wish to repeat these words. “I don’t want to comment on China. In any country, you have good people and bad people. And Yuesheng is a good person,” he said.
“I don’t want any problems with any country,” he insisted.
Meetings in French
Mr. Zaghib, who now works at Concordia University, explained in court how Hydro-Québec values the French language, even within its teams which recruit experts from abroad. At the battery and energy storage research center where Yuesheng Wang worked, all meetings were held in French, he pointed out. Non-French speaking employees were encouraged to learn and speak French.
But Mr. Wang “does not speak French”, even after six years at Hydro-Québec, the witness confirmed.
“He tries, he says “hello, are you okay?” », continued the former manager.
“With Mr. Wang, I communicate in English and with drawings, diagrams, chemical formulas,” he added.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
The Varennes research center where Yuesheng Wang worked
Even in English, communication with the researcher was not always easy. “Are you aware that many people had difficulty understanding Mr. Wang because of his accent?” », asked the witness the lawyer of the accused, Me Alexandra Boulanger.
“A few people told me that they didn’t understand it,” he admitted.
Communication difficile
Patrick Phan, another manager who worked at the research center at the same time as Mr. Wang, also stressed in court that communication could be difficult with the accused.
He spoke mainly in English with his colleagues, and occasionally in Chinese with other colleagues. He spoke no French, or very little.
Patrick Phan, manager at the research center where Yuesheng Wang worked
He said in English conversations, Mr. Wang understood well, but his colleagues did not always understand him.
Mr. Phan explained that he had set up a francization program for researchers from abroad, because the multitude of languages spoken at the center could pose challenges. “We needed to Frenchify the working language,” he said.
Language courses were offered in the workplace starting in 2019 or 2020, accompanied by individual assessments to measure the progress of each employee. But Mr. Wang was fired in 2022 before making significant progress.
Yuesheng Wang’s trial is scheduled to last four weeks at the Longueuil courthouse, before Judge Jean-Philippe Marcoux of the Court of Quebec.
