US citizen and four Chinese agents are charged with spying

THE US said it had charged an American citizen and four Chinese intelligence officers with spying on critics of China, yesterday.

All five conspired to silence Chinese dissidents, pro-democracy activists and human rights leaders, New York prosecutors said in a statement.

The US citizen – 73-year-old Shujun Wang, a prominent Chinese-born academic living in New York – was arrested in March on suspicion of acting as an agent of the Chinese government.

The indictment accuses him of using the pro-democracy organisation that he founded to “covertly collect information about prominent activists and human rights leaders”.

Federal prosecutors say he passed on the information to his “handlers” inside China’s Ministry of State Security: Feng He, Ming Li, Keqing Lu and Jie Ji.

The agents directed Wang to target Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence, and Uyghur and Tibetan activists, the Brooklyn prosecutors said.

Wang faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. His four co-defendants remain at large.