Dangerous Chinese bioweapons and pathogens are increasingly being smuggled into the US to sicken Americans, experts warn.

In the past several years, US Customs officials have seized hundreds of suspicious packages and vials of blood, animal parts and even cancer cells from Chinese officials arriving on American soil.

Security experts told the Daily Mail these incidents are on the rise, fueled by desires to unseat the US as a global superpower and ‘weaken the American people.’

The warning comes after the US Department of Justice accused Chinese researchers Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, of smuggling the fungus Fusarium graminearum into the US.

The FBI identified the fungus, which destroys crops and produces toxins linked to liver and reproductive damage, as a ‘potential agroterriorism weapon’.

Government officials also believe the incident signals ‘the gravest national security concerns.’

And it’s part of a growing trend. In Boston, for example, a Harvard researcher was found to be carrying 21 vials of cancer cells in his sock in 2019. 

And in Detroit, Chinese nations have tried to bring in drug-resistant bacteria and Covid-like viruses, even years before the pandemic.  

Health and security experts tell the Daily Mail these are just the ones the public knows about, and hundreds more incidents may have flown under the radar. 

University of Michigan postdoctoral fellow Yunqing Jian (pictured), 33, has been charged alongside Zunyong Liu, 34, for smuggling the fungus Fusarium graminearum into the US. Liu has not been pictured

A pair of Chinese researchers have been charged in Michigan for allegedly smuggling a biological pathogen (pictured) into the US to study at the University of Michigan

Molecular biologists told the Daily Mail that while transporting Fusarium graminearum alone is likely not a national security threat, bioweapon smuggling from China is part of an ‘ongoing’ issue and could be a sign of even more dangerous pathogens entering the US without being detected. 

Casey Fleming, national security expert and CEO of counterintelligence advisement firm BlackOps Partners Corporation, told the Daily Mail incidents like these are ‘100 percent to harm and weaken Americans under their “unrestricted war” with no rules.’

This includes stripping the country of vital research, exposing Americans to extremely deadly drugs and selling data. 

Brandon Daniels, CEO of supply chain and risk management platform Exiger, also told this website in some cases, ‘these incidents may be tied to unauthorized research activity and intellectual property theft.’

This means perpetrators could take American research and pass it off as their own or sell secrets to other governments.  

US Customs and Border control has suggested incidents like this are on the rise. In 2023, the agency seized 549,238 pounds of drugs and illegal substances. That figure increased to roughly 573,000 last year.

Sean Smith, a biological threat exclusion coordinator at the CBP, said during a conference: ‘We are seeing more and more non-compliant biological materials coming in.’  

Fusarium graminearum, the most recently smuggled pathogen, is a fungus that infects and destroys wheat, rice, oats and barley.

It leads to Fusarium head blight, also called scab, on the heads of infected plants that destroys crops. 

Fusarium head blight also releases the toxin vomitoxin, also called deoxynivalenol (DON), which attacks the digestive system when consumed by humans, leading to nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain.

High levels have also been linked to liver and reproductive damage in animals due to triggering inflammation, though it’s unclear if humans would suffer the same effects. 

Pictured above is a graph from US Customs and Border Protection showing drug seizures in the US per year

Experts told the Daily Mail Chinese nationals may intentionally bring over harmful pathogens like Covid to cause harm or steal their intellectual property

Dr Ebright said Fusarium graminearum ‘already causes estimated losses of $200-400 million annually to US agriculture.’

However, because it ‘has been endemic in the US for at least four decades,’ transporting it from China to the US likely doesn’t have national security implications.

In 2022, CBP officials in Cincinnati seized 62 shipments of ‘unknown biological materials and more than 130 shipments of dangerous pathogens like salmonella, listeria, legionella and clostridium – the cause of food poisoning and botulism – from China. 

Bat specimens were also seized after being smuggled in as tricycles, and blood was shipped across US borders and suspected to be contaminated with Glanders, a zoonotic disease that spreads through direct contact with infected animals. 

Glanders has not been officially detected in the US since 2000 and was declared eradicated from domestic animals in the 1940s. It leads to fever, chills, muscle aches, chest pain, headache and skin ulcers and is at least 50 percent fatal, even with antibiotic treatment. 

In May 2023, a middle-aged Chinese man who flew into Detroit Metropolitan Airport – the same airport where the Chinese couple smuggled in Fusarium graminearum – was found to be carrying four vials of plasmids, DNA molecules found in bacteria. 

Zaosong Zheng (pictured here) was sentenced to prison and deportation after he tried to smuggle 21 vials of cancer cells from Boston to China to take credit for the research he was doing at Harvard

Two of the vials were labeled ‘MRSA’ (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a bacteria notorious for being resistant to many antibiotics.

It enters the body through cuts or scrapes and can attack the bloodstream and vital organs, leading to organ failure. It has a 20 to 50 percent mortality rate. 

The man claimed to be a university professor, but emails to his employer revealed neither knew nor approved of him transporting the vials and that they were outside of the scope of his research. 

The FBI did not disclose the man’s identity. 

Also in Detroit, border agents in November 2018 stopped a Chinese biologist with three samples labeled ‘antibodies’ in his luggage. He claimed someone he worked with in China asked him to deliver the vials to a researcher at a US institute. 

The agents believed the materials contained samples of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a type of coronavirus that predates Covid-19 and originated in China in the early 2000s. 

The researcher was not identified and was released without charges. 

Additionally, 30-year-old Harvard graduate student Zaosong Zheng was stopped by Customs and Border Protection agencies at Boston Logan International Airport in 2019.

Agents found Zheng has stolen 21 vials of cancer cells from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard-affiliated hospital where he worked at the time, and hid them in a sock. 

He told officials he wanted to bring the vials back to China and conduct cancer research under his own name and credit it as a Chinese advancement.  

Zheng was sentenced in 2021 to 87 days in prison, three years of supervised release and deportation from the US. 

Daniels said: ‘These cases highlight the risks posed by illicit trade and why the U.S. government needs to prioritize supply chain surveillance systems.’ 

Fleming believes it’s ‘relatively easy to smuggle these types of small items in personal luggage, via mail, and even shipping containers.’

‘The volume of cargo, mail, and passengers is too immense to screen properly,’ he added. 

The above map shows states that have detected overdose deaths from carfentanil, which is 100 times deadlier than fentanyl

Experts told Daily Mail that fentanyl is often produced in China and shipped to Mexico, where it is pressed into pills (pictured here)

Recent ‘undeniable’ evidence also shows fentanyl and its even deadlier derivative carfentanil have been transported to the US from China, Daniels said.

Carfentil is a synthetic fentanyl made in a lab and typically used as an elephant and large cattle tranquilizer because it is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and 100 times more potent than its cousin fentanyl. 

Fletcher told Daily Mail these drugs ‘are produced in Wuhan and shipped to the southwestern port of Michoacan, Mexico for pressing into tablets and distribution by the Mexican drug cartels throughout America and then on to Latin America and Europe.’

‘It’s a highly efficient way to kill tens of thousands American and allied military aged young men every year while killing the spirit of their families and extended families,’ he added. 

Last October, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed eight separate indictments against China-based chemical companies and their executives for feeding the fentanyl supply chain by smuggling large volumes of fentanyl through to the US and Mexico. 

Daniels said: ‘The indicted firms mislabeled packages, used U.S. re-shippers, falsified invoices, and leveraged encrypted chats to hide shipments that ultimately supply the cartels.’