A New York City-based Chinese-American pro-democracy activist has been charged with spying on other dissidents in New York on behalf of the Chinese government, according to an indictment unsealed last week in federal court in Manhattan.
One of Yuanjun Tang’s alleged victims was a congressional candidate who, according to the indictment, was forced to withdraw from the race because he was allegedly the victim of a smear campaign at the time.
Tang, 67, was arrested after federal prosecutors said he secretly worked for China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) from 2018 to 2023 and conspired to work as a foreign agent of China without properly registering with U.S. authorities, court documents show.
Tang, a resident of Flushing, is a naturalized American citizen who was detained in China following the deadly 1989 pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
In 2002, he fled to Taiwan and was subsequently granted political asylum in the United States, where he regularly collaborated with other Chinese dissidents.
Since moving to the city, he has been protesting against the Chinese government, including monthly protests outside the Chinese consulate in Manhattan, but the indictment accuses him of actually gathering intelligence to send to the communist Chinese government.
“In particular, Tang regularly provided his commanding officer with information about individuals and groups that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) viewed as potentially harmful to PRC interests, particularly U.S.-based Chinese democracy activists and dissidents,” the court documents say.
According to court documents, his targets included a Chinese pro-democracy activist running for Congress in 2022.
Xiong Yan, a pro-democracy activist and Iraq War veteran, ran for Congress in Brooklyn in 2022. But Yan withdrew from the race, telling The Washington Post exclusively at the time that he knew he was a victim of espionage by unregistered Chinese agents.
Yan, a pastor, also said he had been the victim of a smear campaign that included pairing him with a prostitute, making it impossible for him to raise money in his church.
The Washington Post first revealed that Chinese spies working in an office above a noodle restaurant in Chinatown in Lower Manhattan were allegedly spying on their own nationals as part of “Operation Foxhunt.”
In addition to the unofficial Chinese police station in the city, there are around 100 secret Chinese police stations around the world, according to a report by the Madrid-based nonprofit Safeguard Defenders.
As part of his alleged espionage activities, Tang traveled to Macau twice and to China once between 2019 and 2023 to meet personally with his senior officers, the indictment says.
In exchange for cash, Tang provided the Chinese government with information about pro-democracy events in the United States, court documents say.
In one case in April 2022, Tang met with an MSS officer who fitted his phone with a “bug” that allowed all photos and videos to be transmitted directly to his superiors in China, the complaint said.
He used “the compromised phone” to take a photo of an event at the opening of the June 4th Memorial Museum, which was established to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and sent the picture to the MSS.
The pop-up museum, housed on the fourth floor of an office building in Herald Square, opened last year after the original museum in Hong Kong was closed by authorities there in 2021.
Tang’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. He is said to have not yet confessed.
