Chinese-born academic convicted in US of acting as covert Chinese agent

A prominent Chinese-born academic and author who feigned being a pro-democracy activist was convicted on Tuesday of acting as a covert Chinese agent, the Justice Department said.

After a one-week trial, a jury convicted Shujun Wang, 75, of four counts of acting and conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government.

He will be sentenced in January and faces up to 25 years in prison.

Wang, a naturalized US citizen, co-founded a pro-democracy group in Queens, the Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, that was ostensibly opposed to China's communist regime, the Justice Department said.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said Wang, while "masquerading as a pro-democracy activist," was "covertly collecting and reporting sensitive information" about members of the group to China's intelligence service since at least 2006.

"The indictment could have been the plot of a John LeCarre or Graham Greene spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real that the defendant led a double life, pretending for years to be an activist for democracy while he was secretly passing information to the Chinese government," US attorney Breon Peace said.

Four Chinese intelligence officers were indicted in the United States along with Wang but remain at large.

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