A member of New York’s Chinese dissident community on Tuesday pleaded guilty to spying on his fellow activists on behalf of the Chinese government.
Tang Yuanjun (唐元雋), 68, had long been an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party, joining monthly protests outside the country’s Manhattan consulate and founding a pro-democracy nonprofit in Flushing, Queens, where he has lived since 2002.
However, as he publicly advocated against his homeland’s government, Tang was quietly acting on orders from Beijing’s intelligence service to collect information on his fellow Chinese-American rights advocates, according to a guilty plea entered on Tuesday.
Photo: Taipei Times
Federal prosecutors, who brought charges against Tang in August last year, believe he accepted the tasks to gain approval to visit family members in China.
An e-mailed inquiry to his attorney was not returned.
“Tang’s betrayal of the ideals of the US to help the Chinese government repress pro-democracy activists goes against the very values he claimed to promote,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Christopher G. Raia said in a statement.
At the direction of a Chinese intelligence officer, Tang agreed to photograph and record local protests against China, including a 2023 event in Manhattan dedicated to victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, court documents showed.
Tang also provided the officer with a list of immigration attorneys working to help dissidents gain political asylum.
Tang himself was granted asylum in the US in 2002, shortly after escaping to Taiwan from a Chinese prison, where he was held for 12 years for his involvement in student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, according to reports at the time.
Tang told authorities in Taiwan that he paid a fishing boat to bring him close to Kinmen County’s Tatan Islet (大膽島) before swimming to the islet on the morning of Oct. 15, 2002.
Tang surrendered to soldiers on Tatan and told them he wanted to defect.
The American Institute in Taiwan facilitated his move to the US, where he founded a Flushing-based pro-democracy group, the Chinese Democracy Party Eastern US Headquarters Inc, from he which he voiced frequent public criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.
In 2018, speaking with the New York Times about a book in which he was featured, Tang offered a hint of disillusionment about the role of a dissident abroad.
“In the first year you speak brave, bold words,” he said. “In the second, nonsense. By the third, you have nothing to say at all.”
Tang is to be sentenced in January next year. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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