[WASHINGTON] The United States indicted 10 Chinese, including two intelligence officers, over a five-year scheme to steal technology from US and French aerospace firms by hacking into their computers.

The indictments came 20 days after the Department of Justice obtained the unprecedented extradition of a senior Chinese intelligence official from Belgium to stand trial in the United States for running the alleged state-sponsored effort to steal US aviation industry secrets.

The Justice Department said the Chinese Ministry of State Security, through its Jiangsu province unit, engineered the effort to steal the technology underlying a turbofan engine used in US and European commercial airliners.