US convicts academic of being Chinese 'foreign agent'

The US on Tuesday convicted a Chinese-American academic of illegally collecting information for Beijing.

Wang Shujun, 76, was found guilty on four counts including acting as a foreign agent without notifying the US attorney general and lying to US authorities. His sentence is scheduled for January next year. He could face up to 25 years in prison.

What else do we know about the case?

Federal prosecutors said Wang portrayed himself as a proponent of democracy in China and as an opponent of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to gain the trust of dissidents.

He was in correspondence with Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, supporters of Taiwan declaring independence and campaigners for western China's ethnic Uyghur and Tibetan minority groups.

Prosecutors accused Wang of spying on the activists and sharing information with Beijing's Ministry of State Security (MSS).

According to prosecutors, Wang saved email drafts that contained information on conversations, meetings and plans of various critics of the Chinese government. Chinese intelligence officials could read the drafts by signing in with a shared password.

The indictment said that Wang also wrote separate encrypted messages that contained details of upcoming pro-democracy events and plans for him to meet with prominent Hong Kong dissidents.

"The indictment could have been the plot of a spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real that the defendant was a secret agent for
the Chinese government," Brooklyn-based US attorney Breon Peace said in a statement after the verdict.

Wang initially said that he had no contacts in the MSS during interviews conducted by the FBI between 2017 and 2021. He later acknowledged that he occasionally provided information to intelligence officials but insisted that it was all information that was already in the public domain.

Defense lawyer Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma argued that Wang spoke to intelligence officials about the pro-democracy movement to win their support and promote social change and was not acting as a foreign agent.

Wang was arrested in March 2022. He emigrated to New York in 1994 and later became a naturalized citizen.

US cracks down on Chinese 'transnational repression'

Besides Wang, prosecutors also charged four Chinese intelligence officers who allegedly worked as the academic's handlers. They are all at large and believed to be in China.

The US Department of Justice has in recent years cracked down on "transnational repression" by Beijing, referring to alleged attempts at overseas surveillance and intimidation.

Last year, a former New York City police officer was convicted of acting as a Chinese agent by intimidating a US-based fugitive to return to China and face charges.

sdi/rmt (AP, Reuters)