On Tuesday, August 6, the New York court ruled that Wang Shujun, the secretary-general of the Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, was found guilty of illegally acting as a foreign agent in the United States. He collected information on local supporters of Chinese democracy activists and secretly reported to the Chinese state security department.
Wang Shujun was arrested in 2022. His trial took place in the Brooklyn Federal Court, starting from the end of July 2024 and lasting for a week. The jury on Tuesday ruled that Wang Shujun was guilty of four charges, including acting as a foreign agent without notifying the US Attorney General and lying to US authorities.
Federal prosecutors stated that the naturalized US citizen, Wang Shujun, portrayed himself as a vehement critic of the Chinese Communist Party to gain the trust of Hong Kong democracy activists, Taiwan independence advocates, as well as Uighur and Tibetan activists in the US and overseas.
Prosecutors claimed that Wang Shujun was actually surveilling these activists and reporting to four officials of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS).
Prosecutor Nina Gupta, in her closing argument on Monday, pointed out that Wang Shujun was “leading a double life” which has now been exposed.
Wang Shujun immigrated to the United States in 1994.
His defense lawyer, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, stated that Wang’s discussions with Chinese intelligence officers regarding democratic movements were to gain their support and promote social change, not to act as their agent.
The prosecution also accused four Chinese state security officials of acting as Wang Shujun’s handlers. These officials are currently at large, believed to be in China.
The US Department of Justice has been cracking down on Chinese “transnational repression” activities in recent years, which includes monitoring, intimidating, sometimes extraditing or even assassinating anti-communist activists.