At the close of the trial, the lawyer showed the jury two photos. In one, James Bond in a tuxedo, the quintessential spy; in the other, Shujun Wang, looking confused and with his arms raised, far from the classic image of an undercover agent. The last attempt to prove the innocence of the 75-year-old Chinese academic and pro-democracy activist was unsuccessful. On Tuesday, six men and six women in a federal court in Brooklyn found him guilty of all charges – acting as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the attorney general, providing contact information for prominent dissidents to the Chinese intelligence agency and lying to federal security forces about the plan – after just one day of deliberation. If the verdict is not appealed, he faces a sentence of up to 25 years in prison on January 9. Breon Peace, federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of New York, summarized the trial that lasted a week in a statement“The accusation could have been the plot of a spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real.”
“Posing as a well-known academic and founder of a pro-democracy organization, Wang was willing to betray those who respected and trusted him. When confronted with his dishonorable conduct, the defendant lied to law enforcement, but today’s verdict has revealed the truth of his crimes and he will now face the consequences,” the statement continued. The prosecution alleges that since 2006 Wang infiltrated a New York-based Chinese pro-democracy group, covertly collecting and communicating sensitive information about its members to the People’s Republic of China’s intelligence service.
The historian, who has dual nationality, denies all the charges. Outside the courtroom, dressed in a suit with a tie decorated with Chinese motifs, his chosen attire throughout the trial, he insisted passionately in Mandarin, because after more than three decades in the United States, his English remains limited. “They have got the evidence wrong. It is unfair. They are playing with justice. It is fiction.”
The story of Shujun Wang, compiled through interviews and published in May in a special investigation The book, which is funded by the US-based Radio Free Asia, begins in Qingdao, a coastal city in northeastern China. Wang says he worked as a teacher at Qingdao’s School of Social Sciences and wrote books on Chinese military history, having been sparked by his father, who, according to the now-convicted spy, was an interpreter for an American admiral at the end of World War II. Following the popularity of his books, he was invited to the United States as a scholar. He arrived in 1994 for a two-year stint at Columbia and stayed. He worked as a cashier at a convenience store in Flushing, Brooklyn, to survive, while also writing.
In 2006 — around the time of the events that have interested the FBI, which is behind the arrest and indictment — Wang joined the Hu Zhao Foundation, which organized talks and conferences in support of Chinese democracy. He held no senior position, volunteering and helping with accounting and administration. According to the FBI, however, he also began monitoring fellow Chinese, Hong Kong or Taiwanese dissidents for Beijing’s intelligence service. At least one Hong Kong activist about whom Wang provided information ended up detained in China, though the FBI stops short of saying it was specifically because of intelligence provided by the defendant.
According to some former members of the Hu Zhao Foundation, Wang gained a reputation as an unreliable, deceitful man. His stories didn’t quite add up. Wang describes himself as a “famous scholar,” but his time at Columbia was short and the book he claims is his masterpiece, The Legend of Zhang Xueliangabout a leading politician in the Chinese civil war, was partly plagiarized according to Chinese authorities. Furthermore, others claim that his true loyalties were suspected within the foundation because of his apparent closeness to the Chinese security forces; although according to these same members or former members, there are many who have some kind of relationship with the Chinese intelligence apparatus. Despite this, he was kept in the foundation, because he was meticulous and a good worker, and the information he had access to was not particularly sensitive. Wang himself admits this. He freely recounts his encounters with Chinese agents and the “public domain” information he provided them.
For the FBI and U.S. prosecutors, that was enough to charge him with espionage. Because, ultimately, Wang is not the target. That much was made clear by Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division after the trial concluded. “Today’s verdict demonstrates that those who seek to advance the Chinese government’s agenda of transnational repression will be held accountable.” That “transnational repression” — Beijing’s attempts to control its citizens abroad through intimidation — has been in the crosshairs of the Justice Department, and especially this Brooklyn office, for years. Last summer, three men were convicted of intimidating a family in New Jersey; their sentencing is due in September. And the case of two men accused of running a secret police station for the Chinese government in Manhattan is pending trial.
All of this is taking place against the backdrop of growing tensions between the United States and China. In fact, in testimony to Congress last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the agency had opened “thousands of investigations” into Chinese espionage in the country. And the CIA has done its part, too. In a speech in 2023, CIA Director William Burns indicated that spending on countering Chinese intelligence activities had more than doubled. With this strengthening of counterintelligence actions, but also because of greater Chinese activity, more and more low-level informants are being investigated. For the FBI, the profile of the informant does not matter, “espionage is espionage,” and any capture is a victory.
On the Chinese side, the case is not an anomaly, but rather demonstrates to some extent one of the modus operandi intelligence sources in RFA’s investigation say. As they have expanded their network of informants, one of the most effective techniques has been to seek out people who were born and raised in China, and who now live and have American citizenship. Once identified, they recruit them in different ways: by offering them money, appealing to their national pride, satisfying their vanities or even threatening their families in China. As a result, some informants are sincere believers, others are ordinary people who have found themselves in the middle of an international espionage plot.
According to the information available, Wang perhaps falls more easily into the second category. In RFA’s investigation, with whose reporters Wang spoke openly for hours and hours recounting his encounters with Chinese agents in detail, Wang is portrayed as a vain man who embellished his stories for his own benefit, but not necessarily an experienced secret agent. In addition, there is a hint of his financial reality. At the time of his arrest, he only had a car in his name, but he regularly traveled to China, where he was welcomed by members of Chinese intelligence, who invited him to dinner and gave him gifts.
His conviction can hardly be called a decisive operation in the confrontation between the two major powers of the world today. Wang was not a major agent, perhaps not even an agent, just an informant, but under the current rules of the game that is the same as a spy. His lawyer pointed to this outside the courtroom, arguing that his client did not act in “bad faith”. “It is a very broad crime,” he said. “He certainly did not want to hurt anyone. He spent his life fighting the communist regime and life is complicated.”
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