Mara Hvistendahl
Ep. 34 — A Shanghai-based American journalist uncovers a Chinese spy caper that brings her full circle to her midwestern roots / Mara Hvistendahl, Author, The Scientist and the Spy. When journalist Mara Hvistendahl began looking into the FBI’s arrest of a lone Chinese man behaving suspiciously in an Iowa cornfield, she was blown away by what she uncovered. Hvistendahl’s two-year reporting journey led her into the heart of a massive FBI industrial espionage investigation into the theft of genetically modified corn seeds by Chinese agribusinesses, triggered by the arrest of that one individual, Robert Mo. What began as idle curiosity ended in a gripping book, The Scientist and The Spy, in which Hvistendahl documents the extraordinary lengths to which the U.S. government went to make its case against Mo and the implications for other U.S. based Chinese scientists and foreign scientists in general. And it is a microcosm of some of the issues confronting U.S. - China trade relations. Hvistendahl’ s tour de force also offers a disturbing picture of the consolidation of U.S. agriculture in the hands of a few corporate giants, leaving average farmers fighting for survival. And she examines in detail the ethnic discrimination underlying many of these types of criminal investigations and prosecutions.. The story, which Hvistendahl now believes she was meant to write, also had a deep personal twist, bringing her full circle back to her own midwestern roots. I hope you enjoy this saga of one reporter‘s long journey home. Tanscript Download the PDF Chitra: Minnesota native Mara Hvistendahl learned Mandarin because of her mom's history in China. Later as a reporter in Shanghai, Hvistendahl read about a Chinese man found behaving suspiciously in the middle of an Iowa corn field. That odd little story led Hvistendahl on a two year reporting journey that uncovered a massive FBI industrial espionage investigation into the theft of genetically modified corn seeds by Chinese agribusinesses. Hvistendahl's journey also had an unexpected personal twist. Chitra: Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Joining me now is Mara Hvistendahl, author of the book, The Scientist and the Spy. Mara, welcome to the podcast. Mara: Thank you so much for having me here. Chitra: You became a Mandarin speaker because of your mom's amazing story. What was that story? Mara: Sure. My mom was a missionary's daughter. She spent some of her high school years in Asia and then moved back to the Midwest and had kids, got married. After she divorced my father when I was four, she decided to spend a year applying to schools and studying Chinese again. The woman who became her Chinese tutor was also a single mom with a son around the same age as me and my brother. Mara: She's living in the dorm at a St. Olaf College in Southern Minnesota and nobody there knew that she had a child. Her name was Hung-yu, and so my mom thought, let's get her out of the dorm. Hung-yu and my mom ended up moving in together and co-parenting me and my brother and my Chinese brother for a number of years, for five or six years. We became quite close as a kind of blended family. Chitra: You took Mandarin in college and then you decided to move to Shanghai. Why did you move? Mara: I decided in college that I wanted to become a journalist. I took Mandarin, though, more just because of this personal interest and I'd always loved the language and the culture. Then I went to journalism school and I was in New York trying to freelance. I was working as a nanny and a waitress on the side and an editor said to me, "Do you speak some Chinese? You probably should just go to China and see if you can get your start there." Mara: I packed up one or two bags and just moved.