“Pro-democracy activist” sentenced in the US for acting as an undercover Chinese agent

He posed as a critic of the Chinese government in order to build a relationship of trust with people who were actually against the government and then abused their trust by telling Beijing what they had said and planned, prosecutors said.

“The charges could have been the plot of a spy novel, but the evidence that the defendant was a secret agent for the Chinese government is frighteningly real,” Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement after the verdict.

Wang had pleaded not guilty. His lawyers portrayed him as someone who was candid with U.S. authorities about activities he viewed as harmless, and they doubted that his communications were actually under the direction or control of Chinese officials.

“The jury found that he did, and that was enough to convict him, even though there was no evidence that his actions had caused any harm or provided any benefit to the Chinese government, or that Professor Wang is anything but a patriotic American who has dedicated his life to fighting the authoritarian regime in China,” Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma said after the verdict was announced.

Wang, 75, was found guilty of charges including conspiracy to act as a foreign agent without notifying the Attorney General.

The charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 25 years, with sentences varying depending on the defendant’s criminal history and other factors. Wang’s sentencing is scheduled for January 9.

Four Chinese officials who were indicted along with Wang, meanwhile, remain at large. They are among dozens of people being pursued by U.S. prosecutors to crack down on what Washington calls “transnational repression,” the use of government officials to harass, threaten and silence critics living abroad.

The Chinese embassy in Washington denies that the country engages in this practice. It says that the country does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, abides by international law and respects the legal sovereignty of other states.

He co-founded the Queens-based Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, named after two Chinese Communist Party leaders who were supportive of calls for reform in the 1980s. A message was sent to the foundation seeking comment on Wang’s case.

Prosecutors say that under the guise of advocating for change in China, Wang acted as a covert conduit for information sought by Beijing about democracy protesters in Hong Kong, supporters of Taiwanese independence, Uighur and Tibetan activists and others in the United States and elsewhere.

Wang wrote emails – in the style of “diaries” – in which he described conversations, meetings and plans of various critics of the Chinese government.

Instead of sending the emails and leaving a digital trail, Wang saved them as drafts that Chinese intelligence officials could read by logging in with a shared password, prosecutors said.

During a series of interrogations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) between 2017 and 2021, Wang initially said he had no contacts with the Ministry of State Security, but later acknowledged on video recordings that the intelligence agency had asked him to collect information on democracy activists, which FBI agents said he sometimes did.

However, he claimed that he had not provided anything of real value, but merely information that was already publicly available, it was said.

Wang’s lawyers portrayed him as a gregarious academic who had nothing to hide.

“In general, you could say he was very open and talkative with you, wasn’t he?” defense attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma asked an undercover agent who approached Wang in 2021 under the guise of being with China’s security ministry.

“It was him,” said the agent, who testified under a pseudonym and recorded his conversation with Wang at his home in Connecticut.

“Did he seem a little lonely?” Margulis-Ohnuma asked a little later. The agent said he couldn’t remember.

Wang told agents that his “diaries” were advertisements for foundation meetings or reports he had published in newspapers, according to his testimony.

He also pointed out to the undercover agent that publishing these documents would be a way to divert any suspicions on the part of the US authorities.

Another agent, Garrett Igo, told jurors that Wang paused for a moment when he found out in 2019 that investigators were going to search his phone for contacts with the Chinese government.

“And then he said, ‘Do whatever you want. I don’t care,'” Igo said.