A New York City-based Chinese-American pro-democracy activist has been charged with spying on fellow dissidents in New York for the Chinese government, according to an indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court last week.
One of Yuanjun Tang’s alleged marks was a Congressional candidate who was forced to pull out of the race, according to the indictment, claiming at the time he was the victim of a smear campaign.
Tang, 67, was arrested after federal prosecutors said he secretly worked for the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) from 2018 to 2023 and conspired to work as a foreign agent of China without properly registering with US authorities, according to court documents.
Tang, a resident of Flushing, is a naturalized American citizen who was imprisoned in China after the deadly 1989 pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
In 2002, he defected to Taiwan and was then granted political asylum in the US where he has regularly worked with fellow Chinese dissidents.
Since moving to the city he has demonstrated against the Chinese government, including in monthly protests in front of the Chinese consulate in Manhattan. However, the complaint charges he has actually been collecting information to send back to the communist Chinese government.
“Specifically, Tang regularly provided information Tang had gathered about individuals and groups viewed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as potentially adverse to the PRC’s interests, particularly US-based Chinese democracy activists and dissidents [to his handler],” according to court papers.
Among his targets was a Chinese pro-democracy activist who ran for Congress in 2022, court documents say.
Xiong Yan, a pro-democracy activist and Iraqi war veteran, ran for Congress in Brooklyn in 2022. But Yan dropped out of the race, exclusively telling The Post at the time he knew he was the victim of spying by unregistered Chinese agents.
Yan, a pastor, also said he was the victim of a smear campaign that included setting him up with a prostitute, which left him unable to raise money in his community.
The Post first revealed that Chinese spies, working out of an office above a Chinatown noodle shop in Lower Manhattan, were allegedly spying on their own nationals in “Operation Foxhunt.”
In addition to the unofficial Chinese police station in the city, there are some 100 clandestine Chinese police stations around the world, according to a report by Safeguard Defenders, a Madrid-based non-profit.
As part of his alleged espionage work, Tang traveled twice to Macau and once to China between 2019 and 2023 for face-to-face meetings with his handlers, the complaint says.
In exchange for cash, Tang provided the Chinese government with information about pro-democracy events in the US, court papers say.
In one instance in April 2022, Tang met with an MSS officer who installed his phone with a “bug” that allowed all photos and videos to be transmitted directly to his handlers in China, the complaint says.
He used “the compromised phone” to take a photograph of an event at the opening of the June 4th Memorial Museum, established in remembrance of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and sent the picture to the MSS.
The pop-up museum, housed on the fourth floor of a Herald Square office building, opened last year after the original one in Hong Kong was shuttered by the authorities there in 2021.
Tang’s attorney did not return a request for comment Monday. He is not yet believed to have entered a plea.
