عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
World

US Charges Chinese Agents, American Citizen with Spying

The Department of Justice building in Washington, DC, on February 9, 2022. (Getty Images)
The Department of Justice building in Washington, DC, on February 9, 2022. (Getty Images)
TT
TT

US Charges Chinese Agents, American Citizen with Spying

The Department of Justice building in Washington, DC, on February 9, 2022. (Getty Images)
The Department of Justice building in Washington, DC, on February 9, 2022. (Getty Images)

The United States said Wednesday it had charged four Chinese intelligence officers with helping an American citizen spy on prominent critics of China.

Together all five conspired to silence Chinese dissidents, pro-democracy activists and human rights leaders, New York prosecutors said in a statement.

The US citizen -- 73-year-old Shujun Wang, a prominent Chinese-born academic living in New York -- was arrested in March on suspicion of acting as an agent of the Chinese government.

The indictment, dated Tuesday, accuses him of using the pro-democracy organization that he founded to "covertly collect information about prominent activists and human rights leaders."

Federal prosecutors say he passed on the information to his "handlers" inside China's Ministry of State Security (MSS): Feng He, Jie Ji, Ming Li and Keqing Lu.

The agents directed Wang to target Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence, and Uyghur and Tibetan activists, the Brooklyn prosecutors said.

He passed on messages to the four "using encrypted messaging applications and emails, as well as during face-to-face meetings" in China, according to the department of justice statement.

Wang faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. His four co-defendants remain at large.

Wang was arrested on March 17 as US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace announced charges in three separate cases.

In one, MSS agent Lin Qiming, 59, was accused of conspiracy to harass a congressional candidate who was a student leader of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

In the other case, Fan "Frank" Liu, 62, of New York; Matthew Ziburis, 49, of New York; and Qiang "Jason" Sun, 40, of China, were charged with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government.

Most Viewed

 
 
World

Taiwan President Will Visit Allies in South Pacific as Rival China Seeks Inroads

FILE -Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te delivers a speech during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File)
FILE -Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te delivers a speech during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File)
TT
TT

Taiwan President Will Visit Allies in South Pacific as Rival China Seeks Inroads

FILE -Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te delivers a speech during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File)
FILE -Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te delivers a speech during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File)

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te will visit the self-governing island’s allies in the South Pacific, where rival China has been seeking diplomatic inroads.
The Foreign Ministry announced Friday that Lai would travel from Nov. 30 to Dec. 6 to the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau.
The trip comes against the background of Chinese loans, grants and security cooperation treaties with Pacific island nations that have aroused major concern in the US, New Zealand, Australia and others over Beijing's moves to assert military, political and economic control over the region.
Taiwan’s government has yet to confirm whether Lai will make a stop in Hawaii, although such visits are routine and unconfirmed Taiwanese media reports say he will stay for more than one day.
Under pressure from China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory and threatens to annex it by force if needed, Taiwan has just 12 formal diplomatic allies. However, it retains strong contacts with dozens of other nations, including the US, its main source of diplomatic and military support.
China has sought to whittle away traditional alliances in the South Pacific, signing a security agreement with the Solomon Islands shortly after it broke ties with Taiwan and winning over Nauru just weeks after Lai's election in January. Since then, China has been pouring money into infrastructure projects in its South Pacific allies, as it has around the world, in exchange for political support.
China objects strongly to such US stopovers by Taiwan's leaders, as well as visits to the island by leading American politicians, terming them as violations of US commitments not to afford diplomatic status to Taiwan after Washington switched formal recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
With the number of its diplomatic partners declining under Chinese pressure, Taiwan has redoubled efforts to take part in international forums, even from the sidelines. It has also fought to retain what diplomatic status it holds, including refusing a demand from South Africa last month that it move its representative office in its former diplomatic ally out of the capital.