US Sanctions Companies Training Chinese Pilots, Helping China in Weapons Development

The U.S. Department of Commerce on June 12 added dozens of entities—both Chinese and foreign—to its Entity List (pdf), citing concerns regarding national security and foreign policy risks.

A group of companies, including Frontier Services Group Ltd, a security and aviation company and Test Flying Academy of South Africa were sanctioned for “providing training to Chinese military pilots using Western and NATO sources,” said the department.

The agency deemed these activities contrary to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. The listed companies will be subject to export control.

Another number of firms were blacklisted for helping China build its hypersonic weapons and upgrade its military, the agency added.

“It is imperative that we prevent China from acquiring U.S. technologies and know-how to enable their military modernization programs,” Matthew Axelrod, assistant secretary for export enforcement, said in a statement.

Added to the list were Beijing Ryan Wende Science and Technology Co. Ltd. and Xinjiang Kehua Hechang Biological Science and Technology Co. Ltd. The two were alleged to have facilitated the Chinese regime’s monitoring of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region by supplying equipment.

China later criticized the sanctions imposed on its entities, calling it the “wrong practice of politicizing, instrumentalizing, and weaponizing economic, trade, and sci-tech issues with a pretext of human rights or military-related issues.”

“The United States has repeatedly overstretched the concept of national security, abused state power, unwarrantedly suppressed Chinese companies, and wantonly disrupted the international economic order and trade rules,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing in Beijing on Monday.

Test Flying Academy of South Africa

Test Flying Academy of South Africa ( TFASA) gained the spotlight after a May 2022 report by Intelligence Online stated that it was involved in training pilots for the Chinese military—the People’s Liberation Army (PLA.)

“TFASA has been providing training for Chinese commercial pilots for more than 10 years in partnership with the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), a state-controlled group which builds aircraft in collaboration with the two aircraft construction market leaders, Boeing and Airbus Group, as well as helicopters and fighter aircraft—like the PLA’s JL-10,” the report reads.

“TFASA operates in a joint venture with aviation giant AVIC-International Flight Training Academy (AIFA), which trains Chinese and African commercial airline pilots. The South African company has links with the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA) and provides civil aviation training in the province of Liaoning. It also trains pilots to fly aircraft produced by AVIC subsidiary, the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), which is on the way to becoming the world’s third-biggest aircraft manufacturer” it adds.

In April of that year, a video that went viral on Twitter claimed to show a European trainer and a Chinese air force pilot jumping out of their JL-10 training plane in Anhui Province. The PLA air force (PLAAF) uses the JL-10, a supersonic light combat fighter, for training missions. A division of AVIC, the Hongdu Aviation Industry Corporation is the company that made the JL-10.

Pilots Lured by China

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) issued an intelligence alert in October 2022 after it was reported that around 30 former fast jet and helicopter pilots had been attracted to help train China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) pilots with lucrative compensation packages of about $270,000 a year.

In a statement issued to The Epoch Times on Oct. 28, a spokesperson from the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said that the ministry is taking decisive steps to stop the Chinese regime from attempting to headhunt current and former UK Armed Forces pilots to train Chinese armed forces in China.

“All serving and former personnel are already subject to the Official Secrets Act, and we are reviewing the use of confidentiality contracts and non-disclosure agreements across Defence, while the new National Security Bill will create additional tools to tackle contemporary security challenges—including this one,” the spokesperson said.

Former US Military Pilot Arrested

It was also reported that former U.S. military pilot, Daniel Edmund Duggan, was arrested in Australia on Oct. 21, 2022, and he is awaiting extradition to the United States over his working for a Chinese aviation consulting firm from 2017 to 2020.

Boston-born Duggan has been in custody in Australia since October and appeared in a Sydney court in March 2023 by video link from a prison cell for a brief hearing about the U.S. application to extradite him.

Prosecutors allege Duggan received about nine payments totaling around $88,000 Australian dollars ($61,000) and international travel from another conspirator for what was sometimes described as “personal development training.”

Efthymis Oraiopoulos, Jenny Li, and Olivia Li contributed to this report.