How A Chinese Scholar Ran A Spy Ring In US For Decades Before Arrest

A Chinese-American scholar, who projected himself as a pro-democracy activist, has been convicted by a US court of using his reputation to gather information on dissidents and sharing it with the Chinese government.

A federal jury in New York delivered the verdict on Tuesday, The Guardian reported.

The 75-year-old lived a double life for over a decade at the behest of China's main intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, the prosecutors said.

In an opening statement last month, US attorney Ellen Sise said that Wang pretended to be opposed to the Chinese government to "get close to people who were actually opposed to the Chinese government”.

“And then, the defendant betrayed those people, people who trusted him, by reporting information on them to China," Sise noted.

'Plot of a spy novel'

Wang was convicted of providing the contact information of prominent dissidents to the intelligence agency in his homeland. He further lied to federal law enforcement officers about the scheme. The jury found him guilty on four counts following the week-long trial in the Brooklyn federal court, Reuters reported.

“The indictment could have been the plot of a spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real,” Breon Peace, the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement on Tuesday. 

“Wang was willing to betray those who respected and trusted him," Peace noted.

Wang faces up to 25 years in prison, when he is to be sentenced on January 9 next year.

Who is Shujun Wang?

Wang, an American citizen, has been settled in New York since the 1990s after his stint as a visiting university scholar of East Asian studies, The New York Times reported.

To commemorate figures linked to the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, he helped found a pro-democracy group in 2006 in the Flushing neighbourhood of Queens.

Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation is named for two leaders of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1980s. As per its official website, the group's mission is to promote China's "constitutional transformation.” 

However, prosecutors said that Wang used his position and status among the Chinese community to act as a “covert intelligence asset in his own community,” since at least 2006.

Wang, according to the prosecutors, was ordered to collect information about topics and people the Chinese government deemed undesirable. Later, he passed on this information to his handlers via in-person meetings as well as written correspondence, including “diaries,” describing his interactions with prominent activists

Ellen Sise, in the opening statements, noted that Wang led a "double life". 

“He portrayed himself as an academic and a pro-democratic activist... Appearances can be deceiving,” she said.

Wang emigrated to the US in 1994. He was arrested by officials in March 2022.