Chinese dissident who admitted spying for Beijing in the US gets no jail time

NEW YORK (AP) — A member of New York’s Chinese dissident community who admitted spying for five years on his fellow activists on behalf of the Chinese government avoided prison time at his sentencing Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

Yuanjun Tang, 69, an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party for over three decades, was sentenced to three years’ probation by Judge John G. Koeltl. The judge said claims by some individuals who believe they and their families were targeted for harm because of Tang’s actions could not be proven.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jane Chong had asked the judge to impose a five-year prison sentence, the maximum Tang could face after pleading guilty in September 2025 to a charge that he failed to register as an agent of the People’s Republic of China with the U.S. attorney general’s office.

Defense attorney Michael Bradley said Tang was a democracy advocate, writer and activist who desperately wanted to return to China to visit his ailing parents and brother and made a connection with an individual who thought he could make it happen.

The lawyer said Tang didn’t know the man was a spy until he actually got to China, where, as it turned out, his mother and brother had already died.

Speaking through a Chinese interpreter, Tang told the judge that he betrayed his ideology to visit China and “see my parents again.”

“I deeply regret my actions,” he said. “My actions have caused a certain harm to other people.”

Tang’s October 2024 arrest followed several high-profile investigations into China’s attempts to harass and silence dissidents abroad, part of what federal officials have called a campaign of “transnational repression.”

Chong said that the betrayal by Tang, a prominent Tiananmen Square protester, of those who joined him in the protest movement in the U.S. furthered the “story of transnational repression that is still playing out in America today.”

The betrayal came after Tang won the trust of others in the pro-democracy China movement by joining monthly protests outside China’s Manhattan consulate and founding a nonprofit in Flushing, Queens, where he has lived since 2002.

Chong said Tang provided information to Chinese authorities on dozens of individuals from at least 2018 to 2023, including enabling a Chinese handler to join a group online chat titled “Friends of the Chinese Democracy Party” he had begun with 140 Chinese-American individuals.

Four individuals who believe they were victimized spoke at the sentencing. Several of them said they believe the deaths of family members in China were suspicious after their activities in the U.S. were exposed. One man said he did not believe it was a random attack when he was stabbed in the throat with a knife one day.

“They can never stop looking over their shoulders,” the prosecutor said of those who were victimized by Tang’s spying.

She said his actions “had a chilling effect on an entire community of people.”

Tang participated in the 1989 student-led Tiananmen Square demonstrations calling for democracy and political reform that ended with a deadly military crackdown. He was held in a Chinese prison for 12 years for his involvement in the student-led protests, according to reports at the time.

In 2002, he defected to Taiwan and then to the U.S., where he was granted political asylum. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in July 2018.

By then, Chong said, he was already providing information to the Ministry of State Security, China’s principal civilian intelligence agency.

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, according to court documents.

In court papers, prosecutors said the FBI met with Tang in June 2023 to tell him that his phone likely contained malware planted by the People’s Republic of China. They said he then confessed that he had been carrying out tasks for China’s Ministry of State Security for years in return for about $4,200 annually.