This week, an academic from China was convicted after being found out for his secret identity of foreign agent.
Wang Shujun was found guilty by a jury on Tuesday August 6 after a one-week trial held in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York. The 75-year-old, who is a naturalized American citizen from China, was convicted on four different counts. The charges against him include secretly acting as a foreign agent—without informing the country’s attorney general—and lying to the federal government.
Wang’s charges come from accusations that he secretly gathered information from activists in New York who are advocating for Chinese democracy and sent his intel back to his communist government. He now faces up to 25 years in jail, which will be determined at a sentencing hearing scheduled for January 9, 2025.
According to prosecutors, Wang assumed the character role of an adamant opponent to the Chinese Communist Party with the intention of getting in with pro-democracy advocates from Hong Kong as well as supporters of independence for Taiwan and rights for Tibet and Uyghur.
In reality, though, the portrayed Chinese academic was spying on activist groups to inform four individuals working in his country’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) intelligence agency. This point was conflicted by Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, who argued that Wang was motivated by positively changing society rather than playing the role of a spy.
The lawyer is reportedly planning to ask for the court to sentence Wang to a punishment that would not include prison time, noting that he is 76 years old, “didn’t mean to hurt” people, and “spent his life” working against communism.
Wang was first arrested in March 2022, when he was indicted along with four members of the Chinese MSS on charges including transnational repression, conspiracy, and espionage. According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release issued at the time, Wang had made a name for himself as a “well-known academic and author.”
Since 2011, he reportedly “used” this role and his “status” with a Queens-based, pro-democracy group fighting to free China from communism to “covertly collect information” about its leaders and share with the MSS officials.
