The FBI on Monday revealed what it said is evidence of expanding espionage and security activity by the Chinese government on U.S. soil.The Justice Department announced three cases suggesting more brazen activity by China inside the U.S. in the wake of the spy balloon controversy.One case involves Chinese security officials allegedly spying on Zoom calls and then harassing Chinese dissident participants identified as targets.
Ten Chinese officials were charged with conspiracy along with an employee of a telecommunications company.
Another of the cases involves Chinese security officials allegedly setting up a “police station” in New York City and using it as a base of operations to spy on, co-opt or intimidate Chinese dissidents living in the city and elsewhere.
The charges unsealed allege two defendants were operating an illegal overseas “police station” — the first ever in the U.S. — located in lower Manhattan, for a provincial branch of the Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The two suspects operated out a Manhattan office building in Chinatown at the direction of a Chinese police official, prosecutors alleged.
The men engaged in a number of activities on U.S. soil, prosecutors said, including participating in counter protests and targeting specific Chinese dissidents for harassment.
“It is simply outrageous that China’s Ministry of Public Security thinks it can get away with establishing a secret, illegal police station on U.S. soil to aid its efforts to export repression and subvert our rule of law,” said Acting Assistant Director Kurt Ronnow of the Counterintelligence Division. “This case serves as a powerful reminder that the People’s Republic of China will stop at nothing to bend people to their will and silence messages they don’t want anyone to hear.”
Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping have each been charged with conspiring to act as agents of China’s government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
Breon Peace, the U.S. Attorney for that office, said China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) “has repeatedly and flagrantly violated our nation’s sovereignty, including by opening and operating a police station in the middle of New York City.”
