Chinese spy or counterrevolutionary? Foreign agent trial begins in Brooklyn

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. prosecutors alleged a Chinese academic betrayed U.S.-based dissidents to Beijing at the start of the 76-year-old's trial on foreign agents charges on Monday, while defense lawyers said their client was trying to bring democracy to communist China.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Wang Shujun, a naturalized U.S. citizen, exploited his leadership role among pro-democracy Chinese diaspora communities in New York to collect information about activists, and shared it with four officials in China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), an intelligence service.

"He portrayed himself as an academic, an activist, a pro-democracy advocate against the Chinese government," prosecutor Ellen Sise told jurors in her opening statement. "In reality, the defendant Wang Shujun acted as an illegal agent of the Chinese government, spying on New Yorkers for years."

Wang, who emigrated to the United States in 1994, was arrested in March 2022. He pleaded not guilty to four counts including acting as a foreign agent without notifying the U.S. attorney general, and lying to U.S. authorities.

Prosecutors say MSS officials directed Wang to target Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence campaigners and Uyghur and Tibetan activists. They say Wang's scheme ran from 2005 to 2022.

In his opening statement, defense lawyer Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma said Wang spoke to the intelligence officials about the pro-democracy movement in an effort to win their support and promote social change, and was not acting as their agent.

He said Wang even had his photo taken with an MSS officer, showing he was not trying to keep his interactions a secret.

"He's devoted his life to promoting a free and democratic China through peaceful means," Margulis-Ohnuma said. "It was for democracy - it was not as an agent of the Chinese government."

The U.S. Department of Justice has in recent years cracked down on what it calls "transnational repression" by U.S. adversaries such as China and Iran.

That term refers to the surveillance, intimidation and in some cases attempted repatriation or murder of activists against those governments.

Last year, a former New York City police sergeant was convicted of acting as an illegal Chinese agent by intimidating a U.S.-based fugitive to return to his homeland to face charges.

Wang faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

U.S. prosecutors also charged four Chinese intelligence officers who allegedly acted as Wang's handlers. Those officers are at large and believed to be in China.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Gareth Jones and Stephen Coates)