A Chinese academic has been convicted of illegally acting as a foreign agent in the United States by collecting information about New York-based activists supporting democracy in China and sharing his findings with Chinese authorities.
A jury found Wang Shujun guilty on four counts including acting as a foreign agent without notifying the US attorney general and lying to US authorities, following a week-long trial in Brooklyn federal court.
Wang could face up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced on January 9, 2025.
Federal prosecutors said Wang, a naturalised US citizen, portrayed himself as a pro-democracy activist and fierce opponent of the ruling Chinese Communist Party to gain the trust of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence and campaigners for Uighur and Tibetan rights.
Prosecutors said Wang was actually spying on the activists and sharing his findings with four officials in China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), an intelligence service.
“The indictment could have been the plot of a spy novel but the evidence is shockingly real,” Breon Peace, the top federal prosecutor in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, said in a statement.
“Wang was willing to betray those who respected and trusted him.”
Wang, who emigrated to the United States in 1994, was arrested in March 2022.
Defence lawyer Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma said Wang spoke to the intelligence officials about the pro-democracy movement to win their support and promote social change, and was not acting as their agent.
Margulis-Ohnuma said he respected the jury’s verdict and would request a sentence that spares Wang the “agony” of prison.
“We look forward to sentencing,” Margulis-Ohnuma told reporters after the verdict.
“He’s a 76-year-old man. He certainly didn’t mean to hurt anyone. He’s spent his life fighting the communist regime.”
The US Department of Justice has in recent years cracked down on what it calls “transnational repression” by US adversaries such as China and Iran.
That term refers to the surveillance, intimidation and in some cases attempted repatriation or murder of activists against those governments.
Last year, a former New York City police sergeant was convicted of acting as a Chinese agent by intimidating a US-based fugitive to return to his homeland and face charges.
US prosecutors have also charged four Chinese intelligence officers who allegedly acted as Wang’s handlers.
Those officers are at large and believed to be in China.
Liu Pengyu, a repreentative for the Chinese embassy, said in a statement on Tuesday that he was unaware of the specifics of the Wang case but that China opposes the United States’ “slander,” “political manipulation” and “malicious fabrication of the so-called ‘transnational suppression’ narrative and its blatant prosecution of officials from relevant Chinese departments”.
with AP