China's spying efforts growing, with U.S. a top target
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Chinese pro-democracy activists in the U.S. have become increasingly wary about who may be watching them.
Since Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China's spies no longer seem to fear the U.S., according to former diplomat Jim Lewis, whose direct experience with China's intelligence agencies spans more than 30 years. China's Ministry of State Security, or MSS, is the largest and most active spy agency in the world, according to Lewis.
"This is – in scale and in scope and in brazenness – the biggest espionage operation against the U.S. in its history," Lewis said.
China's espionage operation
According to the from America's intelligence agencies, China is the most active and persistent cyber threat to the U.S., but hacking has not replaced Beijing's pursuit of old-fashioned human intelligence.
China's Communist Party leverages a worldwide network of covert agents to monitor and influence events outside its own borders. It's also surveilling and intimidating Chinese dissidents in the U.S.
A Ministry of State Security propaganda video posted on China's largest social network, WeChat, last year boasts that the spy agency "senses things before they happen" and "fights against evil." The video serves as a public message to both foreign adversaries and China's own citizens about the ministry's growing power.
The MSS might have as many as 600,000 employees, according to one estimate.
"And they are committed to going after the United States," Lewis said. "We are target number two for them."
Xi's top target is China's own people, some of whom live in the U.S. So to maintain absolute power at home, Xi looks abroad, Lewis said.
"Xi Jinping probably remembers that a lot of revolutions start outside the home country, and he doesn't want that to happen to China," Lewis said. "So there's a huge effort to pay attention to the expatriate population."
Toward that end, China secretly opened an overseas police station in the middle of New York City. Chinese expats could renew government documents at the station, discovered in 2022, but federal prosecutors said the main purpose of the outpost was to target and harass Chinese dissidents.
"They've done it in the Netherlands, they've done it in Canada. But the idea that you'd open a police station in another country, that's a signal disrespect of the sovereignty of that nation," Lewis said.
What happens when Chinese spies are caught
After the station was shut down, two Chinese-Americans who allegedly opened it were charged with conspiracy to act as unregistered foreign agents of China. One of the defendants later pleaded guilty.
Over the last five years, the Justice Department has indicted more than 140 people for felonies related to harassment, hacking, and spying for China within the U.S.
Linda Sun, one of the accused, worked for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. Federal prosecutors allege she accepted millions to influence who Hochul met with and what the governor said about China. Sun and her husband, who have pleaded not guilty, owned a multi-million dollar home on Long Island and a condo in Hawaii.
"Everyone leaves a record. Some records are more flamboyant than others," Lewis said.
And others, like the trail left by 76-year-old retired historian Shujun Wang, are less flamboyant.
This past August, Wang was on four counts of making false statements, illegally possessing democracy activists' identification, and acting as an unregistered foreign agent of China. He was sentenced on April 14 to three years of supervised release for his role spying for China's government. A federal judge spared Wang prison time because of health problems, including cognitive decline, but reiterated that he committed "serious" crimes against the U.S.
Wang came to the U.S. from China in 1994 as a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York, the city home to more exiled Chinese activists than any other in the world. Wang helped found a group, the Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, that met regularly and was dedicated to democracy in China.
Wang told 60 Minutes he was eager to promote democracy. He became a trusted member of the Chinese dissident community and took notes about who attended pro-democracy meetings and what they said in his role as publicity director for the foundation.
But for 17 years, he was also spying for China.
Wang was indicted in 2022 by the Justice Department for sharing dissidents' names, contact information and private conversations at the direction of the MSS. He calls it a "very big misunderstanding" when asked about sharing information with China's largest intelligence agency. Wang pleaded not guilty.
"Throughout the entire trial they were very careful. They never used the word 'spy.' Just look at the record and you'll see that," he told 60 Minutes. But trial transcripts show federal prosecutors did say three times that Wang was "spying" for the Chinese government, and that he "used his position to spy on and betray other pro-democracy advocates."
Wang repeatedly told federal agents that he had no contact with the MSS, but federal prosecutors said Wang met with MSS officers in China, and search warrants allowed the FBI to access text messages and emails exchanged between them. The texts showed that the officers offered Wang plane tickets, and he later admitted to federal agents that they helped his family in China with a business dispute.
In 2021, an undercover FBI agent posing as an operative from the Ministry of State Security showed up at Wang's door, offering to help delete communications from his computer that might incriminate him, should the U.S. try to prosecute him. Video from the encounter showed Wang welcomed the man's help.
This past August, Wang was convicted on four counts of making false statements, illegally possessing democracy activists' identification, and acting as an unregistered foreign agent of China.
Wang's lawyers, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma and Kevin Tung, admit their client was in touch with Chinese intelligence officers, but they argue he didn't break the law.
"Our position has always been that he never had the intent to be an agent of the Chinese government," Margulis-Ohnuma said.
They claim FBI agents went after Wang once they were unable to recruit him for the U.S.
"They felt a little vindictive and angry and frustrated about their inability to stop higher up actual espionage," Margulis-Ohnuma said, adding that his client was turned into a "fall guy."
Wang's lawyers say he didn't have access to any top secret information, noting that Wang passed along things like the attendance sheet for a pro-democracy event.
"So there's no evidence of any harm to the United States' interests or to democracy movement interests from anything that he did," Margulis-Ohnuma said.
When asked about Wang, China analyst Jim Lewis, now a distinguished fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told 60 Minutes, "He was an agent. He worked with the Chinese government to identify targets for them to surveil and compromise."
Lewis says there's still no substitute for on the ground human intelligence, even if Wang appeared to be an expendable asset for China's top spy agency.
"The Chinese are very good, and so he was not number one on the list of assets to protect. That means there are other assets who are being protected."
The pro-democracy activists being spied on
Two U.S. based pro-democracy activists 60 Minutes spoke to are concerned about being watched by China's spies in America, and with good reason.
Anna Yeung-Cheung's name and contact information, along with the information for 63 others, was found in Shujun Wang's luggage when he returned to New York from a trip to China in 2019. At his trial, she testified against him.
Yeung-Cheung, born in Hong Kong, said she never imagined that Wang was reporting to people in China about what she was doing. Now a U.S. citizen, Yeung-Cheung organizes demonstrations for the Hong Kong democracy movement in the U.S.
She believes Chinese spies are collecting information for Beijing on what's being said at protests and how many people are showing up.
"This is their tactics, right? They try to silence you, harass you, or intimidate you so that you stop what you're doing," she said.
Authorities in Hong Kong have offered 1 million Hong Kong dollars, or about $130,000 USD, for information leading to the arrest of Anna Kwok because of her outspoken activism. Kwok now runs the pro-democracy organization that Yeung-Cheung co-founded. She is currently seeking political asylum in the U.S.
Earlier this month, before her interview with 60 Minutes aired, Kwok's father and brother were arrested in Hong Kong. Kwok says she sees posts about herself on social media every day detailing threats to kidnap her and bring her back to China. If she does go back to China, Kwok believes she will be sentenced to life imprisonment .
"They see me as a traitor, as someone who betrays the Chinese government and the Hong Kong government," she said.
In March, the Trump administration against officials in Hong Kong who have targeted Kwok and 18 other prominent activists living abroad.
Kwok said she's committed no crime, but that China's government views fighting for democracy as criminal.
"Honestly, with China's long arm repression, it's difficult to feel free anywhere in the world," Kwok said. "The thing about the Chinese government is that you can leave the country, you can leave the territory, but you can never actually leave their governance."
