Politics
Queens Man Is Convicted of Spying on Dissidents for China
Shujun Wang, who co-founded an organization devoted to democracy in China, used it to gather information for the authoritarian country’s government, prosecutors said.
A Queens man who billed himself as a scholar and a democracy activist was convicted in Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday of acting as a spy for the Chinese Communist Party.
The man, Shujun Wang, was found guilty on charges of acting as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the attorney general. The jury also convicted him of providing the contact information of prominent dissidents to China’s intelligence agency and of lying to federal law enforcement officers about the scheme.
Mr. Wang faces up to 25 years in prison, prosecutors have said. He is to be sentenced on Jan. 9.
As the jury read the verdict in the chilly federal courtroom on Tuesday, Mr. Wang, who wore a gray suit and colorful tie, was stone-faced, leaning back slightly in his chair.
The verdict capped a brisk weeklong trial during which prosecutors accused Mr. Wang of secretly collecting information about Chinese nationals living in the New York area and feeding it to the Chinese government. Prosecutors said that Mr. Wang had been directed by government officials to target people from groups they considered subversive, including those pushing for democracy in Hong Kong, those who supported independence for Taiwan and Tibet and Uyghur activists, among others.
Mr. Wang’s case is the Justice Department’s latest effort to prosecute what it calls transnational repression — efforts by the Chinese government to control its citizenry abroad through intimidation and harassment — which has been a primary focus for the department, and especially for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, for the last several years.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
