According to a federal investigation, the Chinese Communist Party’s tentacles reached as far as Brooklyn to prevent a naturalized U.S. citizen from being inaugurated.
Xiong Yan – a former student organizer in China – ran for Congress in a 2022 Democratic primary in Brooklyn, but a network of spies from his former country went to great lengths to stop him, according to the investigation that has led to the indictment of at least two people.
Government intercepted messages indicate that an agent tried to set Yan, a 59-year-old pastor and father of eight, up with a prostitute to smear his name or hire a thug to break his legs.
“The communists in China are evil,” Yan told the Post. “I was shocked and surprised when I found out what they had tried to do to me.”
News and rumors were also spread within the Chinese community to discredit Yan, who, according to Ballotpedia, did not drop out of the race but ultimately received only 700 votes.
Last week, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged former democracy activist Yuanjun Tang with spying on other dissidents, including Yan, on behalf of the Chinese government.
Tang, 67, is accused of secretly working for China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), which allegedly equipped him with a spy phone with a camera to report on Yan’s activities during the Democratic primaries.
The “compromised phone” was equipped with a “bug” that allowed the immediate transfer of all photos and videos to the MSS.
In return for his services, the indictment says, authorities paid Tang’s family members in China an undisclosed amount.
In an interview with The Post on Tuesday, Yan said he knew Tang and had seen him at Chinese pro-democracy protests in New York City.
“I had no reason to doubt him at the time,” Yan said. “He was my friend. During the election campaign, I was very busy and so I didn’t pay much attention. Many people came to my speeches and took photos of me.”
Tang’s lawyer stressed that at this point his client is only accused of committing a crime, but declined to comment further.
In addition to Tang, federal authorities also used other, apparently more determined agents to discredit Yan, according to a separate complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn in 2022.
The lawsuit alleges that Qiming Lin, a former police officer in the People’s Republic of China, also helped undermine Yan’s candidacy for Congress.
In a series of recorded phone conversations between Lin and a private investigator working for U.S. federal authorities, Lin said he wanted to use a prostitute to discredit Yan’s candidacy.
“If you don’t find anything after a few weeks of tracking, can we make something up like what happened to the pianist?” Lin said in a conversation, according to the complaint.
The term “pianist” refers to Chinese musician Li Yundi, who was charged with soliciting a prostitute in China a month before surveillance of Yan began in October 2021.
Western reports on the arrest by the BBC and the New York Times expressed skepticism and pointed to the Chinese government’s practice of bringing trumped-up charges against those who step out of line.
The consequences were severe: Li’s membership in the Chinese Musicians’ Association was revoked due to “extremely negative social impact,” according to Slipped Disc, a blog covering the classical music scene. He was also banned from appearing in the media and from leaving the country for two years.
In New York, the investigator said he was unable to uncover “unpaid taxes, extramarital affairs, sexual harassment, child pornography, homosexual activity or anything of that nature” on Yan’s part, the complaint said.
Lin then replied, “As we said, find a girl. Or watch him prostitute himself and take some photos,” the complaint states.
The private investigator then told Lin he needed $40,000 to find a woman to volunteer for Yan’s campaign and then seduce him, the complaint says. Lin is said to have responded in the monitored January 2022 call, “The money is not a problem.”
Lin also hinted at physical violence. “You can start thinking now, what other plans are there besides violence? Huh? But ultimately violence would be OK too,” he said, according to the complaint. “Beat him, beat him until he can’t run for election anymore… car crash, he’ll be completely destroyed, right?”
According to the District Attorney for Eastern New York, Lin is in hiding and remains a fugitive from justice.
Yan told The Washington Post that he did not know about the alleged plans to harm him and smear his reputation until after the primaries, when he was contacted by federal agents and read Lin’s indictment.
He said he knew people from Brooklyn’s Chinese community were working against him when he was barred from speaking events and when he heard about a phone campaign to discredit him.
“At speaking events with other candidates, community leaders would not give me the microphone,” Yan told the Washington Post, adding that he had seen derogatory comments about him on Chinese social media, including calling him a tax evader.
Yan also believes that Chinese leaders fielded another candidate in the crowded primary to split the vote. “They spread rumors against me, but I refused to drop out of the race. I stayed in it from start to finish,” he said.
The primary in Brooklyn’s 10th district was won in August 2022 by Daniel Goldman, who also won the congressional election in November. Yan received 742 votes, ahead of former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who received only 519 votes in the primary.
Yan had already experienced much suffering in China. As a 23-year-old law student at Peking University, he led student protests for political reform and democracy in Tiananmen Square and was present in the early morning of June 4, 1989, when Chinese security forces opened fire on peaceful demonstrators, killing thousands.
He said he helped transport many of his dead and injured fellow students’ bodies to a nearby hospital.
Yan became one of the country’s most wanted men and a few days later he was returned to Beijing under armed guard and imprisoned for 19 months in the notorious Qincheng maximum security prison without being charged with any crime.
After his release, the authorities stripped him of his university degrees and his identity papers. He was granted political asylum in the United States and moved to Los Angeles. He is still considered a refugee in China.
“The people who died in the massacre were all shot,” he told the Post. “I’m really sad that 35 years later, the Chinese Communist Party is still after us and has sent their people to every corner of the United States and the world to find us.”
