Updated Aug. 7 at 10:30 a.m. ET.
Shujun Wang, a dapper 76-year-old Chinese American author, was found guilty today of espionage after a 7-day trial in federal court that exposed a widespread and elaborate effort by the Chinese government to infiltrate the United States and to influence the public’s views of the Chinese Communist Party.
A jury of six men and six women, including three who speak Mandarin Chinese, deliberated for about six hours before finding him guilty of acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, making false statements to federal authorities, and using personal contact information of others in a way that assisted in a crime.
He faces up to 25 years in prison. Wang is to be sentenced on Jan. 9, 2025.
Dressed in a dark gray suit with pink pinstripes, Wang closed his eyes as he listened to the verdict through a translating device held to his ear. Outside of court, he continued to express his innocence of the charges.
"This verdict feels unjust to me," Wang told RFA in Chinese as he exited the courthouse. He said he had not yet decided whether to appeal.
When asked about his next steps, he smiled and said that instead of writing a book about the pro-democracy movement, he plans to write one about life in American prisons that he would title "An American Prison Memoir."
"I'm a writer. Writing a book is easy for me," he said.
Wang became a figure of intrigue in the Chinese pro-democracy movement of Flushing, Queens, where he lives, when he was charged with working secretly for China’s Ministry of State Security, or MSS, a powerful agency that serves as Beijing’s equivalent of the CIA and the FBI.
"The indictment could have been the plot of a spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real that the defendant was a secret agent for the Chinese government," Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement after the verdict was announced.
Wang's case is part of a larger drama that has pitted U.S. authorities against China’s spy masters. The U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn has filed charges against dozens of people over the past several years, accusing them of espionage or similar crimes.
In 2023, a former police detective, Michael McMahon, and two other individuals were found guilty of working secretly for the Chinese government and harassing someone in the United States, trying to illegally extradite them to China, where they’d likely be put on trial.
Another criminal case centers on a police outpost for the Chinese government in New York, which U.S. authorities say was used to intimidate and harass Chinese nationals on American soil. Chinese officials say the office provided administrative services for Chinese nationals and helped them take care of paperwork and fill out forms.
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Wang's case part of a growing trend
Critics of the Chinese government welcomed the trial against Wang. They said it proved that U.S. authorities were now embarking on a serious effort to fight against China’s spy agencies.
Previously, Justice Department officials “were still kind of coming to grips” with the Chinese government’s spying, said David Laufman, a former chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence and export control section.
“Those days are past,” said Laufman, who is now with the law firm Wiggin and Dana. “Now, we’re seeing case after case being brought.”
Chinese government officials have vigorously denied accusations of espionage. “In recent years, the U.S. government and media have frequently hyped up the topic of ‘Chinese spies,’ many of which later proved to be unfounded,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy, told RFA.
Prosecutors presented jurors with a staggering amount of evidence, an archive of material that encompassed email, messages, calendars and notebooks showing Wang’s years-long relationship with MSS officers.
The evidence also helped to shed light on the day-to-day operations of China’s secretive agency.
From the beginning of the trial, Wang’s lawyers had their work cut out for them. Wang had initially told FBI agents that he’d had no contact with MSS. Then, he admitted to an undercover agent that he had met with Chinese security officials regularly.
MSS officials Feng He, or Boss He; Jie Ji, Ming Li, or Elder Tang; and Little Li, or Keqing Lu, were also charged with espionage-related crimes. They are presumably in China.
A sometimes faltering defense
Wang’s defense team included Kevin Tung, a Mandarin-speaking lawyer, and Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, a private attorney appointed by the court to help with the case on July 2.
Somewhat mysteriously, a man who claimed to be a paralegal was added to Wang’s defense team in the trial. Though he gave RFA the pseudonym Wen Wang, court documents identified him as Wentworth Huang Wang, a Florida realtor. The man, who is not related to the defendant, has turned up at several pro-China-related events. Separately, he had just been acquitted of three counts of rape in Florida earlier in July.
Shujun Wang’s lawyers told the jury that he had wanted to promote democracy and that he’d spoken to the MSS officers so they would know about the advocacy work done in the U.S. He had not meant to do anything wrong, they said.
“He's devoted his life to promoting a free and democratic China through peaceful means," Margulis-Ohnuma said of Wang. "It was for democracy. It was not as an agent of the Chinese government.
“Professor Wang believes in democracy. This is not the story of a double life or betrayal … or of deception,” he added. “In fact, there was nothing secret. This was not the CIA. This is not a James Bond movie.”
Margulis-Ohnuma juxtaposed for the jury a movie still of the famous fictional spy wearing a black tuxedo and holding a brandy snifter with a picture of Wang dressed in a loose-fitting, button-up sweater over a yellow T-shirt, waving his arm awkwardly in the air.
Wang, he said, was “a lonely old man who’s keeping diaries and writing books.”
At various times during the trial, the defense lawyers floundered. Margulis-Ohnuma lost his place during one of his courtroom speeches. Seconds passed, and the room remained silent until he regained his footing.
Another time, Judge Denny Chin, who oversaw the trial, admonished Tung, telling him during the cross-examination of a witness that he had to ask questions rather than present testimony himself.
Wang expressed his own frustration with his attorney in a scene that took place outside the courthouse. The defendant yelled at Tung to talk more forcefully in court about his background as a writer. Wang also attempted to submit 80 pages of additional evidence and to bring in new lawyers, but the judge refused both requests.
“This is an unfair trial,” he wrote in a statement he gave to RFA while waiting for the verdict. “I urge the jury to clear the name of Professor Wang, the famous writer.”
Wang had been an academic in China in the 1990s and tried to make a name for himself in the United States. He wrote books and established himself as a member of the pro-democracy movement in New York, volunteering for the Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, an organization named after Chinese officials who pushed for government reforms.
Accusations of betrayal
But, the prosecutors argued, Wang began meeting with the MSS officers and giving them information, betraying his friends in the pro-democracy movement. He traveled frequently to China. From 2015 to 2017, he made at least three times a year. At least one of his trips was paid for by the MSS agents.
Then the FBI agents got in touch with him. They met with him on several different occasions, including once at a restaurant in Flushing, and asked him about his contacts with the Chinese security agency. They secretly recorded one of their meetings. Finally, Wang was arrested at his apartment in Flushing.
At the trial, the prosecutors played a tape that showed him trying to delete incriminating messages he had sent to the Chinese agents. The prosecutors said that starting in 2005 and up until his arrest in March 2022, Wang had been leading a double life.
“He portrayed himself as an academic, an activist, a pro-democracy advocate against the Chinese government,” said Ellen Sise, one of the prosecutors, during the trial. “In reality, the defendant Wang Shujun acted as an illegal agent of the Chinese government, spying on New Yorkers for years.”
Government lawyers called a dozen witnesses, including Anna Yeung-Cheung, the founder of New York for Hong Kong, a pro-democracy group. Her name was included in a notebook Wang had taken to China for his meetings with the MSS officers.
Another of the government witnesses was an undercover agent whose testimony was given without any spectators present to protect their identity. Journalists and others listened from a separate room, straining to hear their voice, piped in through an audio system.
The undercover agent described how they had pretended that they were working for Wang’s MSS handler.
“My objective was to gain the truth,” the agent said. They spoke about the way that Wang had deleted files on his computer in order to cover his tracks, so that the FBI would not find out about his relationship with the MSS.
Edited by Boer Deng.
Updated to correct the spelling of Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma in a photo caption and make minor edits.