A man suspected of spying for China and detained in the Czech Republic is to stand trial for the crime of “unauthorized activity for a foreign power,” a court said on Wednesday.
The man has been in pre-trial custody since being detained in January, media reports said.
“I can confirm the court will deal with the matter,” Municipal Court in Prague spokeswoman Katerina Eliasova said.
Photo: AFP
She said the man, a Chinese national, was charged with “unauthorized activity for a foreign power,” but declined to give further details, including on any trial date.
The Seznam Zpravy news site said earlier the man was the Prague correspondent of a daily run by the Chinese Communist Party, who met Czech and Slovak officials to obtain information from them.
If convicted, he is facing up to five years in prison, Seznam Zpravy added.
The iROZHLAS news site identified the man as Guangming Daily editor Yang Yiming (楊藝明), who had been residing in the Czech Republic since at least January 2024.
The Central News Agency reported that Yang had attempted to collect damaging information on pro-Taiwan politicians, such as Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil and former Czech Chamber of Deputies president Marketa Pekarova Adamova.
The Czech intelligence service BIS regularly singles out China as a security threat, alongside Russia, in its annual reports.
In the 2024 report, it said that “members of Chinese intelligence services continued cultivating relationships with selected pro-China individuals on the Czech political scene.”
These actors sought to find “sympathizers” who would promote Chinese interests, hamper Prague’s cooperation with Taipei and “avoid raising the issue of human rights in China.”
Last year, the Czech minister of foreign affairs summoned the Chinese ambassador over a cyberattack by the China-linked group APT31 targeting his ministry.
The ministry said the attack started in 2022 and targeted “one of its unclassified networks.”
Vystrcil, from the right-wing opposition Civic Democratic Party, is on a four-day visit to Taiwan — his second in six years.
Trying to keep Taipei isolated on the world stage, Beijing sees such visits as an infringement of its “one China” principle.
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