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Even Answers Have New Questions
Since becoming acquainted with the history of Konnech and its relationship to LJ Connection and CC&T Technologies, there are more questions than answers stemming from Konnech’s potential entanglements with Ni’s newfound Mainland China business dealings.
First off, Lionel Ni has owned a 25% share in Interstellar (Hangzhou) Network Technology Co., or 星际 (杭州) 网络技术有限公司 in Simplified Chinese, along with his CC&T partner, En-Wei “Andy” Chai, since March of 2001.
Lionel Ming-Shuan Ni is a naturalized U.S. citizen.
He gets by with a little help from his friends…
In a move reminiscent of a mafia movie, Congressman Bob Carr (D-MI) gave a perceptual wink-and-a-nod ahead of Ni's naturalization hearing, letting the Grand Rapids, MI Clerk know how important Ni was by alerting the Clerk to Ni’s upcoming appearance.
"Lionel...[is] scheduled for a naturalization hearing on December 4th at 10:00am. Enclosed please find a copy of the letter they have sent to me requesting that they be allowed to obtain their naturalization certificates the same day so that they can travel to Taiwan on December 10, 1990. I appreciate any assistance that you may be able to provide in issuing them their certificates the same day they naturalize. Thank you for your cooperation and assistance..." -Congressman Bob Carr (D-MI) November 21, 1990
If you have a while to sit and pick apart resumes, the 2019 University of Macau Complete Vitae (career history) of Lionel M. Ni, found here, is well worth the dive.
A notable find during the course of the research: Lionel Ni's wife, mentioned in his naturalization letter, also founded a company in Michigan in September of 1997 at the same residential address registered to both CC&T Technologies and Angoya — 3864 Hemmingway.
There were no other findings pertinent to the story here, but as it regards the context and timing of the events in question, this tidbit of information is noted.
East-West Affair
Early on in these dives, the rigid communist underpinnings of CCP-managed businesses became patently obvious.
I had not previously explored in depth the chains of acquisitions, mergers, and “trusted partnerships” in Mainland China, but I was flabbergasted throughout this project at how similar America’s ever-merging economic model has become to the communist nation’s.
However, in communist China, What is profitable to the business is profitable to the Party, thus profitable for the political and social elite who control it. The “top 1%” in China is 14 MILLION people. For comparison, Los Angeles metro is home to 13 million.
Intellectual property — patents, copyrights, trademarks, research, etc. — is sometimes without recompense absorbed by the state in China, and thus the People’s Liberation Army.
These concepts are important to garner a basic understanding of Mainland China business.
Lionel Ming-shuan Ni’s Official Vitae from the University of Macau:
Page 1
It’s immediately obvious that Lionel Ming-shuan Ni is not only very influential, but has been influential for a very long time.
Judging by the above entries, one of the presumptive “founding fathers” of Konnech and a global leader in his niche technology field…also from the Michigan State University Department of Computer Science and Engineering…is confirmed here.
Curiously, CC&T Technologies won an award for their revolutionary EMIP-1 Internet Emulator (from Part One) less than 6 months after CC&T’s stated launch.
Ni was the ProgramDirector of the Microelectronic Systems Architecture Program with the National Science Foundation in Arlington, VA from August of 1995 through July of 1996.
He left for LATIC in nearby Rockville, MD, where he immediately began work, and served as CTO from July of 1996 to August of 1997 before leaving for start-up CC&TTechnologies (covered in Part One), presumably along with his continued research.
This is monumental in determining Lionel Ni’s relation to Konnech.
He was at Michigan State University for 22 years. He headed the department for a large chunk of that time.
He himself also claims to have been at MSU until June of 2003. All the while…
Ni was establishing businesses in America and abroad within the same industry that he researched on the public dime, and through countless donations from multi-national corporations like Microsoft.
We now have an entirely newset of questions:
Did university research money fund Ni’s personal businesses, and did any of that make its way to Eugene Yu and his company’s development?
Did public American government programs — classified or not — fund Ni’s research and/or products?
Rockville, Maryland’s LATIC Communications, Inc. was among the first companies to develop internet telephony technology, commercially market it internationally, and offer their own “gateway server” for the service — a plug-and-play device that made the VoIP service accessible to anyone with a PC whose specs could support it.
The capture above shows that Ni was the Chief Technology Officer of LATIC Communications.
As Lionel Ni left LATIC after August of 1997, his wife registered Unidial Communications, Inc. in Michigan on September 10, 1997, then CC&T was established in February of 1998, just before Unidial’s dissolution in April of the same year.
What was additionally interesting was Globdial Communications was registered two whole months later by En-Wei Chai to the same Maryland address that was used later in filings for CC&T Technologies.
The company was eventually “Dissolved Not in Good Standing.”
Lionel Ni wrote a paper about the grant project that he built around the concept:
“Network emulation provides a fully controllable…network environment in which protocols and applications can be evaluated against predefined network conditions and traffic dynamics…EMPOWER is capable of generating a decent network model based on the information of an emulated network, and then mapping the model to an emulation configuration in the EMPOWER…network environment. It is highly scalable…because the network mapping scheme allows flexible ports aggregation and derivation.”
Full disclosure: The word “research” was omitted from the quote to better illustrate the utility of the EMPOWER concept. The purpose the network serves in this capacity is irrelevant to the technological concept
Between 2000 and 2003, Ni received a research grant for his “EMPOWER” project to the tune of $66,000.
There remains some confusion about when exactly Ni was no longer involved in Michigan or was fully involved in China after 2001. Ni moved to his HKUST job in 2002, yet continued to work with Michigan State and do business with Eugene Yu until at least 2003.
Hong Kong’s Got Him Now
After departing Michigan State University in 2002, Lionel Ming-shuan Ni was:
At Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2002-2014)
in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering
as Head Professor from July 2002 to June 2005
and as Chair Professor from July 2005 to December 2014.
as the Director of the WebEx/HKUST Information Technology Institute from November of 2004 to February of 2007.
as the Director of the HKUST Key Information Technology research laboratory from 2004 to 2014,
that was funded and overseen by Microsoft Research Asia and the [CCP]Ministry of Education.
in Senior leadership at Chinese Academy of Sciences from 2004 to 2010
as the Overseas Assessor from December 2004 to December 2008,
and the Founding Director from January 2008 to October 2010 of the Institute of Advanced Computing and Digital Engineering at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology.
as Chief Scientist from September of 2006 to August of 2011 of the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program),
operated by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
as Honorary President between 2004 and 2009 at South China Institute of Software Engineering, Guangzhou University.
Chief Scientist for the CCP
Lionel Ni was serving as the Chief Scientist at the 973 Program — arguably comparable to a CCP DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), managed by the Ministry of Science and Technology — FOR FIVE YEARS (2006-2011).
Don’t forget that En-Wei Chai and Lionel Ni each continued to hold 25% of Interstellar (Hangzhou) Network Technology Co. since LJ Connection launched alongside it in the States in 2001. Lionel Ni’s ownership stake also covers the entirety of the period when he was the Chief Scientist at the 973 Program.
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From the Complete Vitae posted above, page 24, Grant #8:
CAS is the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mainland China’s foremost science institution that oversees programs focused on education and development in the sciences, and specifically in advanced technology design and implementation for the purposes of today. Lionel Ni was awarded a $230,000 grant to establish a joint center for IT research spanning from 2004 to 2007, or $76,666.66 per year.
The grant listed in Lionel Ni’s Official Vitae above indicates that he personally established the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) joint-program with the Chinese Academy of Science.
Not to be overlooked is the award amount and the term thereof — $230,000 for 2004 to 2007. Those three years coincide neatly with Ni’s tenure at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Soon following the establishment of the HKUST/Ministry of Education and Microsoft Research Asia’s Joint Center for Information Technology Research, Lionel Ming-shuan Ni also landed his position as Chief Scientist of the CCP’s 973 Program.
Here are some excerpts quoting Microsoft Research Asia and their Chief Scientist (and naturalized American citizen), Lionel Mingxuan Ni, which provide insight into the belly of the program (the length is worth the time to understand the larger context after 2004):
“…Professor Lionel Ni still remembers coming to Beijing to meet with colleagues at Microsoft Research when he joined HKUST in 2002… It was only natural then, that HKUST would be interested in a new joint lab program when it was proposed by Microsoft Research Asia and the Chinese Ministry of Education (MoE) in 2004… "…We thought HKUST must become one of the first members of this joint lab program,” says Professor Ni.”
”He and his colleagues submitted a proposal that differed from those of other applicants, in that it offered collaboration across a broad front of IT domains…We actually have different domains working together, such as graphic visualization and data mining,”…you’re covering so many things.’ That’s what we want to do…And clearly Microsoft Research and MoE liked the idea: we were one of the first five labs accepted into the program, and the only one in Hong Kong…
….Under the joint PhD supervision programs, students selected by Microsoft Research Asia join HKUST’s doctoral program. During their first year, they live in Hong Kong, meeting their course requirements at HKUST…HKUST and Microsoft Research Asia jointly oversee the program, assigning each student a supervising professor from HKUST and a supervising researcher from Microsoft Research Asia.
Talented HKUST students also enter the program upon recommendation by the university; selected second-year PhD students travel to Microsoft Research in Beijing to work on projects…” -”Building the talent pipeline: the HKUST joint lab story” Pub. February 13, 2015
Microsoft Research Asia and Lionel Ni were quite literally “the talent pipeline” in 2004, as evidenced in this article.
Below, this particular grant’s designed focus was on computing concepts on par with that of the Konnech systems. Even with a cursory knowledge of the subject through research, this is plainly the precise project with which Lionel Ni would be able to build the Konnech systems.
The grant above says in the very first line that it was awarded to “purchase computing and network equipment” for a project at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan State University that explicitly describes Ni’s work in “network emulation.”
Below is a single image of the Mainland China listings on the left (all official business done in the Mainland China is done in Chinese) and the English translation on the right.
Immediately apparent: Lionel Ni registered patents in Mainland China as either M. X. Ni (#5), Ni M. X. (#6), Ni Ming-select (#19-possible translation error/typo), Ming-Xuan Ni (#22), Mingxuan Ni (#23), Ni Ming Xuan (#24), or Ni Mingxuan (#25).
Patents are property. They are a legal representation of an idea. Patents, like any property (trademarks, copyrights, “real” assets) can be bought, sold, or traded — the same as any asset. Due to Mainland China intellectual property and data laws, lines blur very quickly when mixing Mainland Chinese and American properties.
For a quick need-to-know on cross-border data transfer with China, you MUST read this stellar article on the subject from The Authority here.
Intellectual property (IP) itself is bought, sold, and used as an asset. The IP’s value can be subjective to the purchaser, representing the value that the IP could bring to a business endeavor.
It is commonplace for partners to enter business partnerships, some with capital and some with an idea, or product — intellectual property.
All said, it was interesting to find a patent in Ni’s name — new intellectual property — filed by Michigan State in 2008. Lionel Ni had just transitioned from his role as Overseas Assessor (beginning December 2004) into serving as the Founding Director of the Institute of Advanced Computing and Digital Engineering at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology at the [CCP] Chinese Academy of Sciences.
As irony would have it, BestBrief and PollChief were both also copyrighted in 2008, and development of Konnech’s eventual AbVote had just gotten underway.
The granted application and publication, each, occurred just as Konnech’s relative, Jinhua Hongzheng, was getting off of the ground, as well.
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu delivers a speech via video link (newsgd)
As a reward of his clear life-long commitment to science and innovation, Lionel Ni now sits at a brand new desk for the Founding President of pristine Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - Guangzhou (above).
He was signing research deals before the school ever opened its doors (below).
HKUST(GZ)’s President Prof. Ni (first from the left) signs the agreement in Hong Kong: hkust-gz.edu.cn
The agreement is co-signed by Dr. Shum (left) and Prof. Ni in a virtual setting — courtesy: hkust-gz.edu.cn
In an excerpt from Ni’s appointment as Provost in 2019, the HKUST website lauded Ni:
“He received, among others, the esteemed Overseas Outstanding Contribution Award from China Computer Federation in 2009 and is honored the Second Class Award in Natural Sciences for Research Excellence by the State Council, China, in 2011.
He was also appointed as the Chief Scientist of the renownedNational Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) under the Ministry of Science and Technology in Mainland China between 2006 and 2011.”
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Lionel Ni’s cozy relationship with Mainland China in heading entire research programs, university departments, and owning stakes in CCP-controlled companies throughout development of these products, along with his years-long collateral business relationships with Yu in America create several hair-raisers:
An American citizen who concurrently ran CCP research programs while being associated with companies who were developing hardware and software underlying American and CCP government administration systems (and other companies yet unbeknownst)
Was enabled through virtually boundless research and infrastructure funding from the bottomless pockets of both the CCP and U.S. government-university-military-research complexes for a decade and a half.
As he was an acknowledged pioneer of the entire field’s development globally, Ni’s technology has been utilized by developers worldwide. This technology was also clearly on board Konnech products at their inception and for some time after.
Coincidentally, Lionel Ni was funding, staffing, and executing the same research included in the scope of the EMPOWER project, and the same tech that his American and Mainland Chinese companies relied upon to turn profit.
All rational indications point to Eugene Yu and Lionel Ni developing together the entire “Kranium” and “BestBrief” platforms. Yu and Ni were, after all, doing business together sometime between January of 2003 and March of 2005.
Oh. Woops.
I’ve left out a detail.
Remember back to Part One’s introduction to Eugene Yu’s businesses? LJ Connection LLC, Konnech’ Inc, and…
Lionel Ni was listed as a “contact” for Engino Technologies, at least according to Dun and Bradstreet. Eugene Yu was listed as “agent” in the opencorporates.com listing.
This discovery shows that Yu and Ni worked together (also from Part One) from 2003 to 2005 — the same period that Lionel Ni’s questionable entanglements with leadership in CCP-programs began, and immediately before Eugene Yu’s began with Jinhua Yulian in Zhejiang Province.
Notice the reported revenue — $63,000.
Now notice again this grant, amount and the term. Lionel Ni wrote a paper on the advantages of this project in 2002, and for $66,000.
Seven months after this grant’s budget term, Jinhua Yulian was born.
Ni has devoted a lifetime of service to research, development, and most notably — achievement. Lionel Ming-shuan Ni owes entirely his massive success to one gracious, personally empowering land rife with opportunity and democracy:
中国共产党。
And they know it. “How can you say that,” you may ask?
From the Macao International Conference on Marine Administration, Utilization and Development from August 3-4, 2018:
