Man guilty of spying for China on democracy activists in U.S.

A federal jury on Tuesday convicted Shujun Wang on four charges, including acting as an unregistered foreign agent and lying to law enforcement. Wang, 75 years old and born in the United States with Chinese heritage, helped start a pro-democracy group in the Queens borough of New York that opposed the Chinese government, the Justice Department said. But Wang used his position in the group to collect sensitive information about Chinese dissidents abroad which he then reported to the Chinese government.

What did all this look like day-to-day for Wang? For more than a decade, Wang lived a double life as an informant to four officials at China’s Ministry of State Security, prosecutors alleged. Wang sent his handlers information on Chinese dissidents abroad and received assignments from them, via encrypted messaging services. Wang also met with those officials face-to-face while on trips back to China.

To U.S. officials—he was interviewed different times, including in 2019 shortly after stepping off a plane from China—he lied about his connections to China. In emails styled like diary entries, Wang detailed to his handlers conversations he had with Chinese dissidents and information about their activities. U.S. officers found dozens of the entries from various email accounts while executing a search warrant on his residence. U.S. officials also found telephone numbers and contact information he assembled for dissidents he met.

How did U.S. officials finally nab him? Customs and Border Protection during the 2019 airport interview found several notes in his luggage that showed he had met with Chinese officials. Agents also found a black notebook containing handwritten entries about Chinese officials.

Two years later, the FBI sent an undercover agent to visit Wang at his residence in Connecticut. The undercover agent said he’d been sent by Chinese officials to notify Wang that he was under investigation by U.S. authorities and that he needed to begin deleting information he had collected about Chinese dissidents abroad.

Wang provided the undercover agent with the login information to his email accounts so he could delete the diary entries. Wang explained how to access information on electronic devices he had used to communicate with his handlers in China.

During an interview with the FBI weeks later, Wang admitted his relationship with China’s Ministry of State Security. During subsequent searches of his Connecticut residence and an apartment he had in Queens, law enforcement officials discovered troves of notes, contact information, and diary entries confirming his activities and his connection to MSS.

Wang pleaded not guilty and was convicted after a weeklong trial. He faces up to 25 years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for January.

Dig deeper: Listen to Myrna Brown’s conversation with China expert Dean Cheng on The World and Everything in It podcast about a recent Hong Kong law aiming to crack down on dissent.