‘The indictment could have been the plot of a spy novel,’ said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.
A prominent Chinese American scholar based in New York was convicted Aug. 6 on charges he lived a double life as a spy for communist China for over a decade.
Wang Shujun, a 75-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, established himself as a critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and co-founded a pro-democracy organization in New York. However, behind the facade was a man who spied on pro-democracy activists and shared his findings with four officials in China’s top intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), according to prosecutors.
A jury found Wang guilty on four counts, including acting as a foreign agent without notifying the U.S. attorney general and making false statements to law enforcement officers, following a seven-day trial in Brooklyn federal court.
“Posing as a well-known academic and founder of a pro-democracy organization, Wang was willing to betray those who respected and trusted him.”
“Today’s verdict demonstrates that those who would seek to advance the Chinese government’s agenda of transnational repression will be held accountable.”
Defense lawyer Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma said after the verdict that “there was no evidence that what he did caused any harm, was of any benefit to the Chinese government.” He added that his client is “a patriotic American who has devoted his life to fighting the authoritarian regime in China.”
‘Diary’
Wang came to the United States in 1994 as a visiting scholar at a university in New York, according to a court document. In 2006, he co-founded the Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, named after two former reformist leaders of the Chinese regime.
To communicate with his handlers, Wang took trips to China, communicated with them via the Chinese messaging app WeChat, and compiled information he collected into email “diaries” that were accessible by the MSS, according to prosecutors.
According to the court document, Wang wrote one such “diary” entry on March 15, 2016, sharing his “analysis” of potential protests during CCP leader Xi Jinping’s upcoming trip to the United States.
Wang drafted another “diary” on Nov. 16, 2016, which contained a “recitation of his telephone conversation” with a Hong Kong dissident, the court documented stated, without naming the dissident. However, it said the dissident was arrested in Hong Kong on April 18, 2020, and received two concurrent jail sentences of 18 months on May 28, 2021.
The names of the four MSS officials are He Feng, Ji Jie, Li Ming, and Lu Keqing. According to prosecutors, He and Li were based in southern China’s Guangdong Province, while Ji and Lu were based in the northern Chinese city of Qingdao.
Wang flew to Hong Kong on Jan. 28, 2017, under the direction of Li, and his airfare was paid for by He, according to the court document.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials searched Wang’s luggage at John F. Kennedy International Airport on April 12, 2019, after his arrival on a flight from China.
According to the court document, CBP officials found in his possession a “black address book containing numerous handwritten entries with contact information for PRC officials,” including the four MSS officials. PRC is an acronym for China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.