Man known as pro-democracy activist convicted in US of giving China intel on dissidents
By Jennifer Peltz, The Associated Press on August 6, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) – A Chinese American scholar was convicted Tuesday of U.S. charges of using his reputation as a pro-democracy activist to gather information on dissidents and feed it to his homeland’s government. A federal jury in New York delivered the verdict in the case of Shujun Wang, who helped found a pro-democracy group in the city. Prosecutors said that at the behest of China’s main intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, Wang lived a double life for over a decade. “The defendant pretended to be opposed to the Chinese government so that he could get close to people who were actually opposed to the Chinese government,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellen Sise said in an opening statement last month. “And then, the defendant betrayed those people, people who trusted him, by reporting information on them to China.” Wang was convicted of charges including conspiring to act as a foreign agent without notifying the attorney general. He had pleaded not guilty. 6-5
