Chinese scientists have been dying mysterious deaths too

The star of China’s booming artificial intelligence defense sector had been working on Taiwan invasion scenarios—until he died in an unexplained car crash in the early hours of the morning in Beijing, aged just 38.

Many questions remain over the July 1, 2023 death of Feng Yanghe, a professor at the National University of Defense Technology, who had won national competitions with his pioneering “War Skull” platform.

Such as, why did an obituary in the state-run science news website, Sciencenet.cn, say he was “sacrificed”? Why was the brilliant scientist from Gansu province buried in a special cemetery in Beijing for the Communist Party elite, state heroes, and revolutionary martyrs?

Yet as in the U.S., Feng’s death was just one of many unexpected deaths of top-flight scientists working in ultra-sensitive fields such as military AI, hypersonic weapons, and space defense, according to reports in Chinese and overseas Chinese media.

The phenomenon mirrors the wave of disappearances or deaths among American scientists that is now being investigated by Washington. In the U.S, there have been 11 cases, in China at least nine.

It’s prompted a disturbing question among some military analysts: Is there a silent “scientist war” going on?

‘A mastermind war-gaming Taiwan’

Competition between the U.S. and China is deepening with the Chinese and Russian leaders having proclaimed “changes unseen in a century” to the world order and that they are driving the changes. This national power competition is taking place in large part in the fields of science and technology which deliver not just economic but also decisive military prowess.

In China, media and social media reports and obituaries have attributed the deaths to traffic accidents, other unspecified “accidents”, or no cause at all. Their ages have ranged from 26 to 68.

Feng was leaving a work meeting in the Chinese capital when he died at around 2.35 a.m, according to the state-run China Daily, which cited a notice from the organizing committee of his memorial service. He had been working on a “major task,” the report said, without giving details. Sciencenet.cn said he was “sacrificed while peforming official duties.”

“Feng was a mastermind behind AI simulations of potential Taiwan scenarios and it’s very odd that the accident happened in the middle of the night,” said an experienced researcher of the Chinese military who works at a Western think tank and who has been monitoring the situation.

They agreed to comment only on condition of anonymity due to the exceeding sensitivity of the issue. “I don’t think it’s good for your health to be associated with this kind of thing,” the researcher told Newsweek.

“A person killed in a car crash would not typically be described as a having ‘sacrificed’ his life,” said the researcher, who speaks Chinese. The person also said that Feng’s burial in the hallowed Babaoshan cemetery in Beijing was “very odd.”

“The areas [where the deaths are occurring] are in hypersonics, in military AI including swarming technology simulations, stuff that could really make a difference. These types of tech seem to be overrepresented in the clusters. The point could be, not to elimate an entire group, but if they take out some of the brightest minds doing path-breaking work then it has a deterrent effect,” the researcher said, adding that some of the cases will probably turn out to be “complete accidents.”

Hypothetically, an adversary “could be trying to slow [China] down. It’s starting to look more and more unusual,” the person concluded.

The Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. said they were “not aware of the relevant situation” when Newsweek reached out via email.

“What I want to stress is that China has always been committed to promoting scientific and technological progress through cooperation and healthy competition,” a spokesperson for the embassy’s Information and Public Affairs Section said.

Asked by Newsweek, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly did not comment on the China situation but said, “The White House continues to coordinate across the interagency in order to investigate these events and provide transparency to the American people. We will not get ahead of the investigation.”

Outlandish—but not Impossible

It seems outlandish. But scientists have always been a political target, too. An unknown number of Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated, allegedly by Israel as it has sought to slow Iran’s progress to becoming a nuclear-armed state. More died in Israeli and U.S. bombing strikes in June 2025.

There is no evidence that the U.S. and China, or Russia, are engaged in cut-throat scientist assassination campaigns or that they have been targeted by other hostile states. But the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Chinese-language media tracking the untimely or unexplained deaths frequently hint at their suspicions with headlines such as: “Eight Top Scientists ‘Mysteriously Die’!”. Taiwan’s Formosa TV News called it “Extremely Uncommon” in a report last year.

In the Communist Party-ruled mainland of China and Hong Kong, speculation has swirled: “But who would have thought that even in the 21st century, several Chinese geniuses who studied or visited overseas would die mysteriously and inexplicably!” read one article in October last year on the popular 163.com website.

Some Chinese media have noted that other deaths—which are not among the nine tracked by Newsweek—have occurred in the U.S., or that many of the scientists had spent time studying there.

However that is not unusual, as for decades China sent tens of thousands of its brightest scientists to train at America’s top universities.

Many returned to China, either willingly or under subtle or not-so-subtle pressure, to contribute to China’s scientific, technological and military modernization.

More Untimely Deaths

Other deaths attributed to car accidents have included Zhang Xiaoxin, 62, in December 2024, a space expert at the National Satellite Meteorological Centre who specialised in weather monitoring and early warning systems, according to the South China Morning Post.

“Zhang won a top award given by the Chinese military for science and tech progress, although little information is available about his research project,” the newspaper reported.

In 2019, Chen Shuming, 57, a Chinese military scientist and microelectronics expert at the National University of Defense Technology as “leader of China’s high-end weapon chip research and development team,” died in a car accident, according to Electronic Engineering Times China.

The celebrated chemist Zhou Guangyuan died aged 51, in December 2023, with no cause of death given. In an obituary Sciencenet.cn said that after years of study Zhou “had developed a more profound sense of doing what the country needs.”

The expert on materials, especially polymers, was a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a researcher at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics who worked with organisations in practical applications for his research. No cause of death was given.

The hypersonics field has also lost experts such as Fang Daining, 68, apparently after an unexpected medical episode in South Africa in February this year.

“Fang studied super-strong materials for spacecraft and advanced engines at Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), a key defence research university,” the South China Morning Post reported, quoting an obituary it said was posted on the campus of his employer.

Another hypersonics researcher, Yan Hong, 56, who had worked at Wright State University in Ohio before returning to China to join the U.S.-sanctioned Northwestern Polytechnical University, died in March, reportedly following an illness, the South China Morning Post reported.

Last year Zhang Daibing, 47, one of China’s top drone experts and the former deputy director of the National University of Defense Technology’s Unmanned Systems Research Institute as well as the founder of Yunzhihang Technology company, died in Changsha in Hunan province, according to Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao newspaper. No cause of death was given.

Liu Donghao, a prominent data scientist, died in 2024 after an unspecified accident. No date of birth was given in an obituary published by the state-run Global Times, but photographs show a man apparently in his middle years. Liu was the founder of Guizhou Big Data Protection Engineering Security Research and a pioneer in the field of China’s data security management systems, the Global Times reported.

Li Minyong, 49, an internationally renowed biomedical chemist who was a Ministry of Education “talent plan” awardee and a member of the non-Communist Zhigong Party that is part of the CCP’s United Front, died in Guangzhou in November 2025 after a sudden illness, according to his obituary. He had developed “innovative drugs guided by visualization and light-controlled regulation,” the obituary said.

‘Pretty Serious Stuff’

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the string of missing or deceased scientists has drawn widespread attention and online speculation. It could be connected to a “foreign operation,” Representative Eric Burlison said on Sunday. The FBI is investigating.

“We are in competition with China, Russia, and Iran on nuclear technology, advanced weapons, and space. Meanwhile, our top scientists keep vanishing,” the Missouri Republican posted on X.

The growing list of deaths or disappearances of U.S. experts in advanced space, defense and nuclear fields in recent years was called “pretty serious stuff” last week by President Donald Trump, who added that he hoped it was a “coincidence.”

No official connections have been confirmed among the recent cases raised by online reports.