Scholar spared prison in US case alleging China spies on dissidents abroad

NEW YORK – A Chinese American student convicted of spying connected Chinese dissidents was spared situation clip Monday by a U.S. judge.

Shujun Wang was sentenced by U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin to clip served and 3 years’ supervised release, according to attorneys. Wang has been escaped connected bail since the time of his arrest.

Wang, 76, was convicted past summertime of charges including conspiring to enactment arsenic an amerciable overseas agent.

With a communicative that national prosecutors person described arsenic akin to a spy novel, the lawsuit is part of their portfolio connected what Washington views arsenic " transnational repression " by authoritarian governments targeting critics abroad. The Chinese authorities has said it's being slandered by the “malicious fabrication of the alleged ‘transnational suppression’ narrative."

A Chinese-born American citizen, Wang was a past prof successful his homeland. He became a visiting chap astatine Columbia University for a clip successful the 1990s and emigrated to the U.S., wherever helium wrote books and co-founded a pro-democracy radical successful New York City.

Prosecutors portrayed Wang's advocacy arsenic a facade that garnered him credibility with sincere activists, allowing him to stitchery accusation connected Hong Kong ideology protesters, supporters of Taiwanese independence, Uyghur and Tibetan activists and others.

He relayed the intel to China’s main quality agency, the Ministry of State Security, successful the signifier of emails styled arsenic “diaries," according to prosecutors and proceedings evidence. The messages acrophobic demonstrations planned during Chinese President Xi Jinping' s visits to the U.S., day events for the 1989 protests and bloody crackdown successful Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and more.

Wang besides met with ministry officials connected trips to China, according to prosecutors and evidence.

One activistic and chap world mentioned successful the “diaries,” Ming Xia, told the tribunal successful a missive that he’d altered his regular daily arsenic a result. Another activist, Anna Yeung-Cheung, wrote that Wang's “betrayal not lone damaged idiosyncratic bonds and shattered our corporate spot but besides exacerbated harmful stereotypes that picture Chinese and Asian Americans arsenic imaginable spies.”

Another fig successful the “diaries” — Juntao Wang, an world and dissident who spent years successful situation successful China — said helium knew astir Shujun Wang's Chinese Communist Party connections but inactive appreciated his enactment with the pro-democracy movement.

“From the position of accepted Chinese governmental civilization and modern Chinese politics, his dual individuality is simply a communal and understandable phenomenon,” helium wrote to the court. Saying that immoderate genuine supporters of ideology besides woody with Chinese officials to summation immoderate benefits, helium asked for a abbreviated condemnation for Shujun Wang.

Shujun Wang told FBI agents successful interviews that his communiqués were conscionable accounts of publically disposable tidbits.

In a New York Times Magazine interview aft his conviction, helium astatine times called the diaries a hobby and said helium hadn't known his contacts successful China worked for the information agency. At different points, helium acknowledged sharing accusation with Chinese officials and said helium was conscionable trying to beforehand ideology to the Communist government, according to the magazine.

Wang’s attorney, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, called Judge Chin's condemnation a “wise” decision.

“It appropriately recognized that his behaviour was not driven by immoderate fiscal motive and did limited, if immoderate harm,” said Margulis-Ohnuma, who besides noted that Wang has aggregate wellness problems.

In tribunal papers, Margulis-Ohnuma said the lawsuit didn't picture a debonair spy but alternatively “an aging ideology activistic — lonesome and starved for attention, anxious to delight and ever delighted to prosecute — who occasionally provided mostly-useless accusation to the Chinese authorities and lied astir it arsenic helium became older, much impaired and much isolated.”

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Hill reported from Albany, New York.

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