FROM WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Democratic Delegate Chao Wu was born in Hubei, China, and has been a member of the Maryland House of Delegates since January 2023, where he serves on the Ways and Means Committee. Prior to attaining elected office, he served as president of the University of Maryland’s chapter of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, and an archived version of his LinkedIn page shows that he was once affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party’s Thousand Talents Program.
The CSSA was established to “monitor Chinese students and mobilize them against views that dissent from the CCP,” and its individual chapters are overseen by the CCP’s United Front Work Department, a global network of party loyalists tasked with gathering intelligence and exerting influence, according to the State Department. The Thousand Talents Program, meanwhile, has been flagged by the FBI as a Chinese government-backed industrial espionage operation.
Wu’s tenure as president of the University of Maryland’s CSSA chapter occurred while he was working on an engineering doctorate at the institution in the early 2000s. The length of Wu’s affiliation with the Thousand Talents Program, which is listed on an archived version of his LinkedIn page from 2013 as the “Thousand Talents Plan Overseas Talent Exchange Circle,” is unknown.
Despite his connections to two established CCP influence groups, Wu secured jobs in the federal government and sensitive technology firms, first as a software development fellow at the FDA and then as a senior electrical engineer at Maryland Aerospace, a defense contractor working on projects for the military.
The information listed is from WashingtonExaminer.
