Innocent professor or secret agent? Shujun Wang, the Chinese American academic who has been convicted of espionage in New York

During closing arguments, the lawyer showed the jury two photos. In one, James Bond in a smoking jacket, the spy par excellence; in another, Shujun Wang, arms raised and with a confused look on his face, far from one’s classic image of a secret agent. This last attempt to prove the innocence of the 75-year-old Chinese academic and pro-democracy activist didn’t work. On Tuesday in a Brooklyn federal court, six men and women found him guilty on all charges — of acting as a foreign agent without notifying the attorney general, providing the contact information of certain dissidents to Chinese intelligence agencies and lying to law enforcement about the plan — after just one day of deliberation. If he does not appeal the verdict, on January 9, a 25-year prison sentence awaits. Breon Peace, U.S. attorney general for the eastern district of New York, summed up the week-long trial in a statement: “The indictment could have been the plot of a spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real.”

“Posing as a well-known academic and founder of a pro-democracy organization, Wang was willing to betray those who respected and trusted him. When confronted with his shameful conduct, the defendant lied to law enforcement, but today’s verdict revealed the truth of his crimes and now he will face the consequences,” continues the statement. Wang is accused of having infiltrated a New-York-based group that supports Chinese democracy, secretly compiling and communicating sensitive information about its members to People’s Republic of China intelligence agencies.

The historian, who has dual citizenship, denies all charges. Outside the court, dressed in a suit and a tie with a Chinese design motif, his chosen attire throughout the trial, he passionately proclaimed his innocence in Mandarin, his English limited after living for more than three decades in the United States. “They have made a mistake with the evidence. It’s unjust. They are playing with justice. It’s fiction.”

The story of Wang, as recompiled through interviews and published in May in a special investigation by U.S.-funded media company Radio Free Asia, begins in Qingdao, a coastal city in northeastern China. According to Wang, he worked as a professor at Qingdao’s school of social sciences and wrote books about Chinese military history, an interest passed down from his father who, according to the convicted spy, was an interpreter for a U.S. admiral at the end of World War II. The popularity of Wang’s books led him to be invited to the United States as an academic. He arrived in 1994 for a two-year period at Columbia University and wound up staying. He worked as a cashier at a store in Flushing to survive and continued to write.

In 2006 — the beginning of the events that would eventually attract the attention of the FBI, the agency that orchestrated Wang’s arrest — Wang joined the Hu Zhao Foundation, which hosts talks and conferences in support of democracy in China. He didn’t hold any leadership position, but was instead a volunteer and helped out with accounting and administration. According to the FBI, he also began to surveil his peers, dissidents from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, for Beijing intelligence agencies. At least one Hong Kong activist on whom Wang provided information wound up detained in China, though the FBI couldn’t say if this outcome specifically resulted from the intelligence provided by Wang.

According to some former members of the Hu Zhao Foundation, Wang earned a reputation for being untrustworthy and a liar. His own account paints a different picture. Wang describes himself as a “famous academic,” but his time at Columbia was brief and a book that he calls his masterpiece, The Legend of Zhang Xueliang, on a politician who played a key role during the Chinese civil war, was partially plagiarized, according to Chinese authorities. Others from the foundation suspected his true allegiances, given his apparent closeness with Chinese law enforcement; although according to those same members or former members, it is common to have some kind of relationship with Chinese intelligence agencies. Despite this, he was allowed to remain at the foundation. He was meticulous and a hard worker, and the information to which he had access was not particularly sensitive. Wang himself admits this. He has no qualms in telling of his meetings with Chinese agents and the information “in the public domain” with which he provided them.

For the FBI and U.S. prosecutors, that was enough to accuse him of espionage. Because ultimately, Wang is not the target. The assistant attorney for national security at the U.S. Department of Justice, Matthew G. Olsen, made this clear after the trial ended. “Today’s verdict demonstrates that those who would seek to advance the Chinese government’s agenda of transnational repression will be held accountable.” That “transnational repression,” comprised of Beijing’s attempts to control its citizens living abroad through intimidation, has been in the sights of the Justice Department, particularly at its Brooklyn office, for years. Last summer, three men were convicted of intimidating a New Jersey family; their sentence will be handed down in September. And the case of two men accused of administrating a secret police station in Manhattan for the Chinese government is pending trial.

All this is taking place amid growing tensions between the United States and China. In fact, in testimony given to Congress last year, FBI director Christopher Wray shared that the agency had opened “thousands of investigations” into Chinese espionage taking place on U.S. soil. The CIA has also gotten involved. In a 2023 speech, the agency’s director, William Burns, said that they had more than doubled the budget for counteracting Chinese intelligence activities. With this strengthening of counterintelligence plus China’s increasing operations, more and more low-level informants are under investigation. In the eyes of the FBI, an informant’s status is of little importance. “Espionage is espionage,” and every takedown counts as a victory.

In the context of China, Wang’s case is far from an anomaly. In a certain sense, it demonstrates one of the modi operandi of its intelligence services, according to sources interviewed by Radio Free China. As they enlarge their network of informants, one of the most effective techniques has been to look for people who were born and raised in China, and who now live and have citizenship in the United States. Once identified, they are recruited via several channels: offering them money, appealing to their national pride, playing up to their vanity and even threatening family members who remain in China. In consequence, some informants are true believers and others are average people who have found themselves, one way or another, in the middle of a plot to commit international espionage.

According to available information, Wang might more easily fall into the latter category. In the article for Radio Free China, with whose reporters Wang spoke openly for hours and hours and during which he told of his meetings with Chinese agents in detail, he is portrayed as a vain man who embellished stories for his own benefit, but not necessarily an experienced secret agent. It also emphasizes his financial situation. By the time he was arrested, the only thing he had registered under his name was a car, yet he was traveling regularly to China, where he was being received by members of Chinese intelligence, who invited him to dinners and gave him gifts.

His conviction could hardly be categorized as a key moment in the conflict between the two world powers. Wang was not a high-level agent — it’s possible he wasn’t an agent at all, but rather an informant. But under the rules of the game, that’s considered the same as being a spy. His lawyer made this point outside the courtroom, claiming that his client did not act in “bad faith.” “It’s a very broad crime,” he said. “He certainly didn’t mean to hurt anyone. He’s spent his life fighting the communist regime and life is complicated.”

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