US authorities have arrested two suspected Chinese government agents in connection with an alleged plot by Beijing to disrupt and ultimately topple the exiled anti-communist Falun Gong spiritual movement.
John Chen and Lin Feng were charged in an indictment unsealed on Friday with scheming to revoke a New York-based Falun Gong organization’s tax-exempt status and paying bribes to an undercover officer posing as a US tax agent.
The undercover officer recorded multiple conversations with Chen, and investigators obtained a wire tap to record phone calls in which Chen and Feng discussed instructions they purportedly received from Chinese government officials, prosecutors said.
Photo: AP
In one recording Chen referred to Chinese government officials as akin to “blood brothers,” and in another, he said Beijing would be “very generous” in rewarding the undercover officer for help in revoking the Falun Gong organization’s nonprofit status, prosecutors said.
Chen, a 70-year-old US citizen, and Feng, a 43-year-old permanent US resident, are charged with acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government, bribing a public official and conspiracy to commit international money laundering.
Chen and Feng were born in Chinan but live in the Los Angeles area, where they were arrested on Friday. Information on an initial court appearance or lawyers who could speak on their behalf was not immediately available.
Messages seeking comment were left with the Chinese embassy in Washington and with the Falun Gong movement.
China banned the Falun Gong movement in 1999, classifying it as an evil cult and one of the “Five Poisons,” or chief threats to its rule. Since then, Falun Gong practitioners have found refuge at a 162-hectare compound called Dragon Springs in upstate New York.
The US Department of Justice has made a series of prosecutions in recent years to disrupt China’s efforts in the US to identify, locate and silence democracy advocates and others who are openly critical of Beijing’s policies. Such practices by foreign governments are known as “transnational repression.”
“The Chinese government has yet again attempted, and failed, to target critics of the [People’s Republic of China] here in the United States,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
The US would “continue to investigate, disrupt, and prosecute” China’s efforts to “silence its critics and extend the reaches of its regime onto US soil,” Garland said.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
UNWAVERING: Paraguay remains steadfast in its support of Taiwan, but is facing growing pressure at home and abroad to switch recognition to Beijing, Pena said Paraguayan President Santiago Pena has pledged to continue enhancing cooperation with Taiwan, as he and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed opposition to any unilateral change to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait using force, Japanese media reported on Saturday. Kishida yesterday completed a trip to France, Brazil and Paraguay, his first visit to South America since taking office in 2021. After the Japanese leader and Pena spoke for more than an hour on Friday, exchanging views on the situation in East Asia in the face of China’s increasing military pressure on Taiwan, they affirmed that “unilateral attempts to change the