The arrest of a prominent Chinese pro-democracy activist on spy charges has shaken a community of dissidents already alarmed by the specter of infiltration from Beijing.
Yuanjun Tang, who was part of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 but is now a naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested Wednesday after federal prosecutors accused him of secretly working for the Chinese Ministry of State Security, or MSS.
Prosecutors allege that Tang failed to notify the U.S. government of his work for Chinese intelligence agencies, as required by law, according to the Justice Department. Tang is accused of passing information about pro-democracy activists in the United States to an unnamed MSS agent, using methods similar to those disclosed in another recent Chinese spy case.
Tang, 67, had once been the chairman of the China Democracy Party, the New York-based group founded by Juntao Wang, the leader of the Tiananmen protests, that sought to affect change in Beijing. Following Tang’s arrest, the party announced that it would expel him from its membership.
Wang and other members of the dissident community reacted to Tang’s arrest, which was first reported by CBS News, with a measure of sympathy and disdain.
In an interview, Wang called the arrest “really embarrassing” but noted that his brother and mother had been ill and needed care. Tang would have likely been arrested if he traveled back to China to see them without some agreement with authorities.
“It was actually dangerous for him to return to China,” Wang said. “Because he was involved in the democracy movement, his family became very miserable.
“In the end, we still have to look at the FBI indictment and the U.S. government indictment to see what he did,” Wang said.
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Liren Hu, an exiled entrepreneur from Shanghai who now lives in the United States, told RFA Mandarin that he was “very surprised” by the arrest.
Hu said he met Tang in April 2019 after just arriving in the U.S. At the time, Tang was serving as the head of the China Democratic Party, and Hu said they had gotten along well. He described Tang as polite, well-spoken and knowledgeable.
“We have always been in contact with each other as good friends. I was very shocked to see this news today, and called him because I often talk to him on the phone,” Hu said. The line had been disconnected, he said.
Other dissidents were less surprised, saying Tang had signaled he could not be trusted.
Pokong Chen recalled seeing Tang at a Tiananmen commemoration event taking photos and videos, rather than participating in the demonstration. Suspicions circulated within the community that Tang had been lured to betray the democracy movement by offers from the Chinese Communist Party to return to see his family, Chen said.
“Then he saw that the overseas democracy movement was not as successful as he had imagined, and he felt frustrated and disappointed,” Chen said. “Under these circumstances, he gradually showed various signs of betrayal.”
Mike Gao, a Chinese American lawyer who said he has known Tang for 20 years, said Tang’s attitudes toward the Communist government in China appeared to soften as he grew older.
“He’s changed somewhat in recent years, often criticizing the student movement for being too aggressive during the Tiananmen protests,” Gao told RFA in an interview. “I had many face-to-face debates with him about this, and I confronted him, ‘Why don’t you condemn the Chinese government instead for the massacre?’”
A shaken community
Even so, Gao said that Tang’s arrest had sparked a flurry of discussion within the dissident community, as members try to understand why another pro-democracy leader was now being accused of working as a Chinese agent.
The recent verdict in the Shujun Wang case and Tang’s arrest have made the Chinese diaspora more aware of the risks involved in navigating gray areas with Chinese officials.
“My advice to the Chinese community is to be cautious,” he said. “The Chinese government may exploit your identity or use threats to coerce you into working for them.”
Chen believes that the overseas democracy movement has already been deeply infiltrated by the CCP.
“There are probably more cases like Wang and Tang in the overseas democracy movement, and more cases may not be exposed yet,” Chen said.
Additional reporting by Jane Tang. Edited by Boer Deng and Jim Snyder.