Man known as pro-democracy activist convicted in US of giving China intel on dissidents

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. He held himself out as a critic of the Chinese government so that he could build rapport with people who actually opposed it, then betrayed their trust by telling Beijing what they said and planned, prosecutors said.

“The indictment could have been the plot of a spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real that the defendant was a secret agent for the Chinese government,” Brooklyn-based U.S. attorney Breon Peace said in a statement after the verdict.

Wang had pleaded not guilty. His lawyers cast him as someone who was forthcoming with U.S. authorities about activities he saw as innocuous, and they disputed that his communications were truly under Chinese officials’ direction or control.

“The jury felt they were and that was enough to convict him, even though there was no evidence that what he did caused any harm, was of any benefit to the Chinese government or that Professor Wang is anything other than a patriotic American who has devoted his life to fighting the authoritarian regime in China,” attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma said after the verdict.

Wang, 75, was convicted of charges including conspiring to act as a foreign agent without notifying the attorney general. The charges carry the potential for up to 25 years in prison, though