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

NEW YORK (AP) — A Chinese American scholar convicted of spying on Chinese dissidents was spared prison time Monday by a U.S. judge.

Shujun Wang was sentenced by U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin to time served and three years’ supervised release, according to attorneys. Wang has been free on bail since the day of his arrest.

Wang, 76, was convicted last summer of charges including conspiring to act as an illegal foreign agent.

With a story that federal prosecutors have described as akin to a spy novel, the case is part of their portfolio on what Washington views as " transnational repression " by authoritarian governments targeting critics abroad. The Chinese government has said it's being slandered by the “malicious fabrication of the so-called ‘transnational suppression’ narrative."

A Chinese-born American citizen, Wang was a history professor in his homeland. He became a visiting fellow at Columbia University for a time in the 1990s and emigrated to the U.S., where he wrote books and co-founded a pro-democracy group in New York City.

Prosecutors portrayed Wang's advocacy as a facade that garnered him credibility with sincere activists, allowing him to gather information on Hong Kong democracy protesters, supporters of Taiwanese independence, Uyghur and Tibetan activists and others.

He relayed the intel to China’s main intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, in the form of emails styled as “diaries," according to prosecutors and trial evidence. The messages concerned demonstrations planned during Chinese President Xi Jinping' s visits to the U.S., anniversary events for the 1989 protests and bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and more.

Wang also met with ministry officials on trips to China, according to prosecutors and evidence.

One activist and fellow academic mentioned in the “diaries,” Ming Xia, told the court in a letter that he’d altered his daily routine as a result. Another activist, Anna Yeung-Cheung, wrote that Wang's “betrayal not only damaged personal bonds and shattered our collective trust but also exacerbated harmful stereotypes that depict Chinese and Asian Americans as potential spies.”

Another figure in the “diaries” — Juntao Wang, an academic and dissident who spent years in prison in China — said he knew about Shujun Wang's Chinese Communist Party connections but still appreciated his work with the pro-democracy movement.

“From the perspective of traditional Chinese political culture and contemporary Chinese politics, his dual identity is a common and understandable phenomenon,” he wrote to the court. Saying that some genuine supporters of democracy also deal with Chinese officials to gain some benefits, he asked for a short sentence for Shujun Wang.

Shujun Wang told FBI agents in interviews that his communiqués were just accounts of publicly available tidbits.

In a New York Times Magazine interview after his conviction, he at times called the diaries a hobby and said he hadn't known his contacts in China worked for the security agency. At other points, he acknowledged sharing information with Chinese officials and said he was just trying to promote democracy to the Communist government, according to the magazine.

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

“It appropriately recognized that his conduct was not driven by any financial motive and did limited, if any harm,” said Margulis-Ohnuma, who also noted that Wang has multiple health problems.

In court papers, Margulis-Ohnuma said the case didn't depict a debonair spy but rather “an aging democracy activist — lonesome and starved for attention, eager to please and always delighted to engage — who occasionally provided mostly-useless information to the Chinese government and lied about it as he became older, more impaired and more isolated.”

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Hill reported from Albany, New York.