Yuanjun Tang, 67, a naturalized citizen of the United States and resident of Queens, New York, was charged by criminal complaint with acting and conspiring to act in the United States as an unregistered agent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and making materially false statements to the FBI. Tang was arrested today in Flushing, Queens, and will be presented this afternoon.
According to court documents, Tang is a former PRC citizen who was imprisoned in the PRC for his activities as a dissident opposing the one-party authoritarian political system controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the PRC’s sole ruling party. In or about 2002, Tang defected to Taiwan; he was subsequently granted political asylum in the United States and has since resided in New York City, where he has regularly participated in events with fellow PRC dissidents and leads a nonprofit dedicated to promoting democracy in China.
Between at least in or about 2018 and in or about June 2023, Tang acted in the United States as an agent of the PRC by completing tasks at the direction of the PRC’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), which is the PRC’s principal civilian intelligence agency. The MSS is responsible for, among other things, the PRC’s foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, espionage and political security functions.
Specifically, through a particular email account, encrypted chats, text messages and audio and video calls, Tang regularly received instructions from and reported to an MSS intelligence officer regarding individuals and groups viewed by the PRC as potentially adverse to its interests. These included prominent U.S.-based Chinese democracy activists and dissidents. He also traveled at least three times for face-to-face meetings with MSS intelligence officers and helped infiltrate a group chat on an encrypted messaging application used by numerous PRC dissidents and pro-democracy activists. Law enforcement recovered instructions Tang received from MSS along with photographs, videos, and documents that he collected or created for transmission to MSS from numerous electronic devices belonging to him.
Tang also made materially false statements to the FBI. He falsely claimed that he could no longer access an email account through which he had communicated with his MSS handler via draft emails.
Tang faces charges including one count of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the Attorney General (maximum penalty: five years); one count of acting as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the Attorney General (maximum penalty: ten years); and one count of making false statements (maximum penalty: five years). If convicted, sentencing will be determined by a federal district court judge after considering U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division; U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York; Executive Assistant Director Robert Wells of FBI's National Security Branch announced these developments.
The FBI is investigating this case while Assistant U.S. Attorney Jane Yumi Chong for Southern District New York alongside Trial Attorney Scott Claffee from National Security Division's Counterintelligence & Export Control Section are prosecuting it.
A criminal complaint is merely an allegation; all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt.