Tag: Chinese Spy

US expert on underground nuclear tests detained in China for 18 months

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Three scientists monitoring seismic data on multiple computer screens in a control room

An American scientist who has studied underground nuclear tests has been detained in China for more than 18 months on spying charges, according to his supporters and a US lawmaker. Youlin Chen, a seismologist, has been “wrongfully detained” since November 2024, US Senator Edward Markey said in a statement Tuesday. President Donald Trump raised Chen’s detention and asked for his freedom during a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing in May, according to Global Reach, a US non-profit that has been working with Chen’s family on his case. Chen, who was living in Boston and has a college-age son, is the only American currently held in China designated as wrongfully detained, the non-profit said. The case adds another point of friction between the US and China as they try to stabilize ties, and ahead of Xi’s expected visit to the US later this fall.

Its revelation comes weeks after China confirmed the arrest of another US scholar, Min Zin, who it said is “suspected of spying and endangering Chinese national security.” Global Reach said there are suspicions that Chen’s detention is linked to China’s recent expansion of its nuclear capabilities, including carrying out an alleged underground nuclear test in 2020. Beijing denies this test. China and the US have both signed, but not ratified, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) – an international agreement prohibiting “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.” Chen’s work focuses on using seismological data to improve methods to identify and monitor nuclear tests. It has included research into North Korea’s underground nuclear testing. Chen’s research has been funded by the US State Department and US Air Force Research Laboratory.

In December 2020, he authored a technical report that used regional seismic data recorded across Asia, including data from stations in China, to improve methods for nuclear-test monitoring and yield estimation, according to Global Reach. A subsequent 2024 study that he authored was also funded by the US Air Force Research Laboratory and the US Department of State and “further reinforces Chen’s expertise in the seismic monitoring and detection of underground nuclear tests,” the group said. Detained at airport Chen was detained at the airport after visiting his parents in Beijing, according to Kieran Ramsey, chief investigative officer at Global Reach. “China is being accused … by the State Department of violating (the CTBT),” Ramsey said. “And at the same time they’re holding the American expert that would be able to identify that exactly.” “Unfortunately, this case is an example of China being willing to use hostage diplomacy as part of their great-power competition with the US and unfortunately Doctor Chen is the sole example right now officially designated by the US government,” he added.

Earlier this month a pastor who founded one of China’s most prominent underground churches was released from prison and reunited with his family in the United States after being detained in a crackdown in China last year. His release came after Trump raised his case with Xi during his May visit. A State Department spokesperson told CNN that the US has raised Chen’s case directly with Chinese officials and called for his immediate release. When asked by CNN whether the case was raised by Trump during his meeting with Xi, a White House official said that “President Trump has been clear that he wants every American detained abroad to return home.” China’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday denied that Chen was “wrongfully detained” and said judicial authorities handle cases in accordance with the law, when asked about the case at a regular press briefing. Chen was charged with espionage on May 1, 2025, but has not yet stood trial.

The family decided to speak out now about his detention because Trump’s request has not been acted on, Global Reach said. Chen’s wife, Yufang Rong, said she had not spoken to her husband for over 600 days and was concerned for his health. “Youlin has never held a US government security clearance and to suggest he was involved in espionage is both wrong and inconsistent with the public and collaborative nature of the work that he has done,” she said in a statement provided by Global Reach. Noting that her husband “works transparently with Chinese colleagues on scientific collaboration,” she added: “He is doing precisely the kind of people-to-people engagement that the Chinese government says it wants.” US embassy officials have visited Chen several times, but Chinese officials are always present, preventing him from speaking freely, Rong told Reuters in an interview. She retained a Chinese lawyer, but he was allowed to see Chen only after the scientist had been detained for more than 13 months. Chinese officials have interrogated her husband more than 100 times about his work on the seismographic signatures of North Korean nuclear tests, she said.

Source: US expert on underground nuclear tests detained in China for 18 months | CNN

By pride comes nothing but strife, But with the well-advised is wisdom.
Proverbs 13:10

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From the Past: China operating over 100 police stations across the world with the help of some host nations, report claims

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Earth at night with glowing flight paths from Beijing to cities like London, Moscow, Dubai, Sydney, and Tokyo

Beijing has set up more than 100 so-called overseas police stations across the globe to monitor, harass and in some cases repatriate Chinese citizens living in exile, using bilateral security arrangements struck with countries in Europe and Africa to gain a widespread presence internationally, a new report shared exclusively with CNN alleges. Madrid-based human rights campaigner Safeguard Defenders says it found evidence China was operating 48 additional police stations abroad since the group first revealed the existence of 54 such stations in September. Its new release – dubbed “Patrol and Persuade” – focuses on the scale of the network and examines the role that joint policing initiatives between China and several European nations, including Italy, Croatia, Serbia and Romania have played in piloting a wider expansion of Chinese overseas stations than was known until the organization’s revelations came out.

Among the fresh claims leveled by the group: that a Chinese citizen was coerced into returning home by operatives working undercover in a Chinese overseas police station in a Paris suburb, expressly recruited for that purpose, in addition to an earlier disclosure that two more Chinese exiles have been forcibly returned from Europe – one in Serbia, the other in Spain. Who runs the police stations? Safeguard Defenders, which combs open-source, official Chinese documents for evidence of alleged human rights abuses, said it has identified four different police jurisdictions of China’s Ministry of Public Security active across at least 53 countries, spanning all four corners of the globe, ostensibly to help expatriates from those parts of China with their needs abroad. Beijing has denied it is running undeclared police forces outside its territory, with its Ministry of Foreign Affairs telling CNN in November: “We hope that relevant parties stop hyping it up to create tensions. Using this as a pretext to smear China is unacceptable.”

Instead, China has claimed the facilities are administrative hubs, set up to help Chinese expatriates with tasks like renewing their driver’s licenses. China has also said the offices were a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which had left many citizens locked down in other countries and locked out of China, unable to renew documentation. When approached by CNN last month about Safeguard Defenders’ original allegations, China’s foreign affairs ministry said the overseas stations were staffed by volunteers. However, the organization’s latest report claims one police network it examined had hired 135 people for its first 21 stations. The organization also sourced a three-year contract for a worker hired at an overseas station in Stockholm. Undeclared consular activities outside of a nation’s official diplomatic missions are highly unusual and illegal, unless a host nation has given their explicit consent, and the Safeguard Defenders report claims China’s overseas offices predate the pandemic by several years. Their reports have prompted investigations in at least 13 different countries so far and enflamed an increasingly heated diplomatic tussle between China and nations like Canada, home to a large Chinese diaspora.

China isn’t the only superpower to be accused of employing extrajudicial means to reach targets for law enforcement or for the purposes of political persecution abroad. Russia, for instance, has on two occasions been accused of deploying lethal chemical and radioactive substances on British soil to try to assassinate its former spies – allegations Russia has always denied. In the United States, the CIA was embroiled in a scandal over the extraordinary rendition of terrorism suspects from the streets of Italy to Guantanamo Bay after 9/11. Yet the suggestion of widescale repression of Chinese citizens in foreign countries comes at a pivotal time for a nation contending with its own unrest at home, amid fatigue at the country’s restrictive zero-Covid policy, as leader Xi Jinping’s third term in power gets under way. Last week, China indicated it would loosen some of its pandemic restrictions, three years after the onset of Covid-19. As the second largest economy in the world, China has developed a deepening relationship with many of the countries where the new police stations have been allegedly found, raising awkward questions for national governments balancing commercial interests against national security.

China signs police patrol agreements with nations Italy, which signed a series of bilateral security deals with China over successive governments since 2015, has kept largely silent during the revelations of alleged activities on its soil. Between 2016 and 2018 Italian police conducted multiple joint patrols with Chinese police – first in Rome and Milan – and later in other cities including Naples where at the same time, Safeguard Defenders says, it has found evidence that a video surveillance system was added to a Chinese residential area ostensibly “to effectively deter crimes there.” In 2016, an Italian police official told NPR that joint policing would “lead to a wider international cooperation, exchange of information and sharing resources to combat the criminal and terrorist groups that afflict our countries.” The NGO determines Italy has hosted 11 Chinese police stations, including in Venice and in Prato, near Florence. One ceremony in Rome to mark the opening of a new station was attended by Italian police officials in 2018, according to videos posted on Chinese websites, demonstrating the close ties between police forces in the two countries.

Earlier this year, the Italian newspaper La Nazione reported local investigations into one of the stations had not unearthed any illegal activity. Il Foglio quoted police chiefs as saying recently that the stations did not present any particular concern as they appeared to be merely bureaucratic. Italy’s foreign and interior ministries did not reply to questions from CNN. China also struck similar joint police patrol agreements with Croatia and Serbia between 2018 and 2019 as part of the nation’s increasing strategic footprint along the path of Xi’s defining foreign policy, dubbed the Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese officers were seen on a joint patrol with their Croatian counterparts on the streets of the capital Zagreb as recently as July of this year, Chinese media reported. A Zagreb police official interviewed by Xinhua said the patrols were essential for “protecting and attracting foreign tourists.” A 2019 report from Reuters said Chinese officers had joined Serbian officers on patrol in Belgrade to help address the influx of Chinese tourists.

One Serbian officer noted the Chinese didn’t have the power to make arrests. Safeguard Defenders also says Chinese stations were able to get a toehold in South Africa, and in nearby nations thanks to a similar accord with Pretoria, in place for years. China began laying the foundations for closer policing ties with South Africa’s law enforcement agencies almost two decades ago, later setting up a network of what are officially called “Overseas Chinese Service Centers” in cooperation with the government of South Africa thanks to successive bilateral security agreements. China’s consulate in Cape Town has said the plan “unites all the communities, both South Africans and foreign citizens in South Africa.” Since its establishment, the framework “has been actively preventing crimes against the community and reducing the number of cases significantly,” the consulate has said while noting that the centers are non-profit associations with no “law enforcement authority.”

South African government officials have frequently been featured by Chinese media expressing support for the centers and saying their work has helped police deepen their relationship with Chinese expatriates who live there, according to a 2019 report from the Jamestown China Brief. CNN reached out to the South African Police Service, but it has not yet received comment. China tries to return people against their will Safeguard Defenders stumbled on the police networks while trying to assess the scale of China’s efforts to persuade some of its people to return to China even against their will, which, based on official Chinese data, could number almost a quarter of a million people around the world during the time Xi has been in power. “What we see coming from China is increasing attempts to crack down on dissent everywhere in the world, to threaten people, harass people, make sure that they are fearful enough so that they remain silent or else face being returned to China against their will,” said Safeguard Defenders Campaign director Laura Harth. “It will start with phone calls. They might start to intimidate your relatives back in China, to threaten you, do everything really to coax the targets abroad to come back.

If that doesn’t work, they will use covert agents abroad. They will send them from Beijing and use methods such as luring and entrapment,” Harth said. The French interior ministry declined to comment on the allegation that a Chinese citizen was coerced into returning home by a Chinese police station in a Paris suburb. Reports spark anger and investigations The revelations have prompted vocal outrage in some countries and a conspicuous silence in others. Last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Homeland Security Committee he was deeply concerned about the revelations. “It is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop, you know, in New York, let’s say, without proper coordination. It violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law enforcement cooperation processes,” he said. Ireland has shut down the Chinese police station found on its territory, while the Netherlands, which has taken similar measures, has a probe underway, as does Spain. Harth told CNN the organization will likely find more stations in the future. “It’s the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “China is not hiding what it is doing.

They expressly say that they are going to expand these operations so let’s take that seriously. “This is a moment when countries have to consider that it’s a question of upholding the rule of law and human rights in their countries as much for people from China, as for everyone else around the world,” she said.

Source: China operating over 100 police stations across the world with the help of some host nations, report claims | CNN

With my soul I have desired You in the night, Yes, by my spirit within me I will seek You early; For when Your judgments are in the earth, The inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.
Isaiah 26:9

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Eileen Wang resigns, will plead guilty to acting as Chinese agent

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SP Eileen Wang in handcuffs at press conference with police officer and media

A Southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government, and has resigned from her city position, officials said Monday. Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, was charged in April with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected on a rotating basis. City manager Dominic Lazzaretto said in a news release that no city finances or staff were involved.

“We want to be clear: this investigation concerns individual conduct, and the charges are for conduct that ceased after Ms. Wang was sworn into office in December 2022,” he said. Federal officials said she has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. Wang’s attorneys Jason Liang and Brian Sun said in a statement that she recognizes the seriousness of the charge and accepts responsibility for “past personal mistakes.” “She apologizes and is sorry for the mistakes she has made in her personal life,” Wang’s attorneys Jason Liang and Brian Sun said in a statement. “Her love and devotion for the Arcadia community have not changed and did not waver.” According to her plea agreement, Wang and a colleague, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, worked on behalf of government officials for the People’s Republic of China from the end of 2020 to 2022 to promote their interests by promoting pro-PRC propaganda in the U.S. Sun is serving a four-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to the same charge last October.

He was also listed in campaign filings as the treasurer for Wang’s 2022 election campaign. Wang and Sun operated the news website U.S. News Center, aimed at the Chinese American community, and were instructed by Chinese government officials to post pro-PRC content on it. In one instance in June 2021, a government official sent Wang a link to a letter to the editor published in the Los Angeles Times written by the consul general of the People’s Republic of China in Los Angeles. The piece refuted reports of the persecution, forced labor, and abuse of Uyghers in China’s Xinjiang province, stating, “There has never been genocide in Xinjiang or forced labor in the region’s cotton fields or any other sector.”

Source: Eileen Wang resigns, will plead guilty to acting as Chinese agent | CNN

The young lions lack and suffer hunger; But those who seek the LORD shall not lack any good thing.
Psalm 34:10

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Democrats decry ‘smear’ as Trump FBI pushes for release of Eric Swalwell file

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detectives in tilt shift lens

The Trump administration has reportedly been pushing to release records from an FBI investigation related to Eric Swalwell and alleged links to a Chinese agent as the Democratic congressman makes gains in the California governor’s race. The Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing “three people familiar with the effort”, that the FBI director, Kash Patel, is pushing to release the files, even though there is no public evidence of wrongdoing on Swalwell’s part.

The records stem from a decade-old investigation into a suspected spy who had developed relationships with US politicians and assisted Swalwell with fundraising. An FBI official previously said Swalwell was cooperative with the investigation and was not suspected of wrongdoing. He cut off contact with the woman after speaking to the FBI. The profile of Swalwell, an outspoken critic of Donald Trump who served as a congressional manager during the president’s second impeachment trial, has risen as the contest for California governor takes shape. The field of candidates to replace Gavin Newsom is crowded, with at least eight Democrats, including Swalwell, and two Republicans.

Source: Democrats decry ‘smear’ as Trump FBI pushes for release of Eric Swalwell file | Democrats | The Guardian

For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister.
Hebrews 6:10