The trial is just starting. But if the federal prosecutors are honest and competent, and took care to gather conclusive evidence that Wang Shujun is a spy for China before going to trial—none of which can be taken for granted—it doesn’t look like a matter of differing interpretations, one innocuous, one sinister, of facts equally susceptible to both.
But this is what his defense attorney is arguing: that Wang (shown above) was meeting with Chinese intelligence officers not to betray pro-democracy Chinese nationals in New York City but to try to win the officers over to the pro-democracy side (“Chinese Spy or Counterrevolutionary? Foreign Agent Trial Begins in Brooklyn,” Reuters, July 29, 2024).
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Wang Shujun, a naturalized U.S. citizen, exploited his leadership role among pro-democracy Chinese diaspora communities in New York to collect information about activists, and shared it with four officials in China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), an intelligence service.
“He portrayed himself as an academic, an activist, a pro-democracy advocate against the Chinese government,” prosecutor Ellen Sise told jurors in her opening statement. “In reality, the defendant Wang Shujun acted as an illegal agent of the Chinese government, spying on New Yorkers for years.”
Wang, who emigrated to the United States in 1994, was arrested in March 2022. He pleaded not guilty to four counts including acting as a foreign agent without notifying the U.S. attorney general, and lying to U.S. authorities.
Prosecutors say MSS officials directed Wang to target Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence campaigners and Uyghur and Tibetan activists. They say Wang’s scheme ran from 2005 to 2022.
In his opening statement, defense lawyer Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma said Wang spoke to the intelligence officials about the pro-democracy movement in an effort to win their support and promote social change, and was not acting as their agent.
According to a September 2023 article about the case published by Radio Free Asia, Wang has stated in an affidavit “that his years-long involvement with the pro-democracy movement and his public statements calling for reforms in the Chinese government show he was not secretly working for the Chinese government.” Spies don’t have cover stories or present themselves in more than one way?
I don’t know what evidence the prosecutors will be presenting. But if the time frame of Wang’s incriminating activities—2005 to 2022—is accurate, and he was meeting with Chinese Ministry of State Security officials during all that time—Chinese government officials who wanted information from him—no, this activity was not about kindling a love of freedom and democracy within the Chinese government.
