An American scholar and activist has been convicted by a US court of acting as a covert Chinese agent.
Shujun Wang, 75, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Chinese descent, an academic and author who helped start a pro-democracy organisation in Queens, New York, that opposes the current communist regime in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), was convicted on Thursday on all four counts of an indictment charging him with acting and conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the U.S. Attorney General, criminal use of identification and making false statements to law enforcement.
“This defendant infiltrated a New York-based advocacy group by masquerading as a pro-democracy activist all while covertly collecting and reporting sensitive information about its members to the PRC’s intelligence service,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “Today’s verdict demonstrates that those who would seek to advance the Chinese government’s agenda of transnational repression will be held accountable.”
U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York, said, “The indictment could have been the plot of a John LeCarre or Graham Greene spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real that the defendant led a double life, pretending for years to be an activist for democracy while he was secretly passing information to the Chinese government. The defendant was a perfect stooge for the PRC, a well-known academic and founder of a pro-democracy organization who was willing to betray those who respected and trusted him. When confronted with his shameful conduct, Wang lied to the FBI, but today’s verdict revealed the truth of his crimes and now he will face the consequences.”
Executive Assistant Director Robert Wells of the FBI’s National Security Branch, said, “This conviction underscores the FBI’s commitment to countering espionage schemes by holding those accountable who collect U.S. activist information for the benefit of China. Any support for transnational repression is unacceptable, and the FBI works diligently with its partners to seek out and bring to justice those who support such activities.”
Wang is one of the founders of the pro-democracy Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, an organization located in Flushing, Queens, whose members are well-known pro-democracy dissidents who oppose the current government of the PRC.
“But instead of promoting democracy in the PRC, Wang, at the direction of PRC government officials, used his position within the Memorial Foundation and his status within the Chinese diaspora community to collect information about prominent activists, academics and dissidents, and reported that information to the PRC government,” read a US Department of Justice website.
According to court documents, since at least 2006, Wang operated under the direction and control of his co-defendants – four officials of China’s Ministry of State Security, which is responsible for the PRC’s foreign intelligence collection.
At the MSS’ direction, Wang gathered information on people and groups that the PRC considers subversive, such as Hong Kong democracy protestors, advocates for Taiwanese independence and Uyghur and Tibetan activists, both in the United States and abroad.
Wang conducted face-to-face meetings with MSS officials while on trips to the PRC and used an encrypted messaging application to receive taskings from his co-defendants and to send and receive written messages and files.
Wang often memorialized the information he collected in email “diaries” to be accessed by the MSS. These “diaries” included details about Wang’s private conversations with prominent dissidents, as well as the activities of pro-democracy activists and human rights organizations. Law enforcement recovered from Wang’s residence approximately 163 “diary” entries that he wrote to He, Ji, Li and Lu and other MSS officials. Additionally, in connection with his work for the MSS, Wang possessed telephone numbers and contact information belonging to Chinese dissidents.
Wang made materially false statements to federal law enforcement, falsely denying that he had contacts with PRC officials or the MSS.
Over the course of three separate interviews, between 2017 to 2021, Wang repeatedly denied having any contact with individuals from the Chinese intelligence agency.
During one of the interviews, in 2019, Wang was interviewed by federal law enforcement agents at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, after he returned from China. Wang falsely stated that he had no contact with anyone from the Chinese government and that he had no Chinese government contact information.
The verdict followed a one-week trial. Wang’s co-defendants in the espionage and transnational repression scheme, Feng He, Jie Ji, Ming Li and Keqing Lu are MSS officials who remain at large.
Wang is scheduled to be sentenced on January 9, 2025 and faces up to 25 years in prison.
A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ellen Sise and Nina Gupta for the Eastern District of New York and Trial Attorney Garrett Coyle of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section prosecuted the case.
