Man on Trial for Monitoring Pro-Democracy Activists for China

Emails, phone calls, text messages, even audio recordings. U.S. prosecutors have presented the evidence against defendant Wang Shijun. They say it shows that Wang's close ties to Chinese intelligence officers date back two decades. The trial is ongoing in the Eastern District Court of New York in Brooklyn, and today's Flora Hua was in the courtroom. On Wednesday afternoon, Judge Danny Chen ordered the courtroom to shift from public to private because the prosecutors had brought in a special witness in the case of Wang Shijun. The witness? Undercover FBI agent Chen. The FBI has had its eye on Wang for years. They suspected him of spying on pro-democracy activists for China. Chen is fluent in both Chinese and English. He showed up at Wang's residence in 2021 and pretended to work under a Chinese spy that Wang knew. Wang soon welcomed him in. What Wang didn't know is that everything he said to Chen was being recorded and would become critical evidence against him three years later. Wang believed Chen was sent by China to help him delete his records saved as so-called diaries in email drafts. Wang said he wrote two or three diary entries every month at the instruction of two Chinese spies. Details recorded in them included information on events he attended, conversations he had with people there, plus their names and phone numbers. Wang said he started one diary in 2003 and the other sometime in 2015 or 2016. U.S. government attorneys described Wang as having lived a double life. The 76-year-old is facing four charges, conspiring to and acting as a foreign agent, making false statements to the FBI, and illegally possessing other people's information. If convicted, Wang could face up to 20 years behind bars. He's pleading not guilty to all charges. Wang first came to the U.S. as a visiting scholar and became a naturalized American citizen in 2003. He later became a leading member in a pro-democracy organization. In the indictment, Wang is accused of having close ties with the Chinese spy agency. It's called the Ministry of State Security, or MSS. Three government witnesses testify in the trial. One of them, a China expert, explained how the Chinese Ministry of State Security operates inside and outside of China. China expert Alex Javsky said the MSS has both law enforcement and intelligence gathering functions. He said the agency is most interested in five groups, pro-democracy supporters, the Falun Gong faith group, supporters of Taiwan independence, Tibetans and Uyghurs. These groups face severe suppression inside China. Outside China, the MSS tries to gather information from members of these groups, as well as recruit them and price them to publicly discredit their groups. The expert witness said he interviewed an American student who was approached by an MSS officer in China. The officer asked the student to keep diaries in a shared email account, like Wang, but the American student rejected. In 2019, when Wang landed at New York's JFK airport from China, FBI agents seized his personal phone book. In it, they found handwritten contact information of Chinese MSS officers. Wang is accused of lying to the FBI by saying he never contacted those officers. I asked Mr. Wang Shijun what he thinks about the evidence provided by the U.S. government. Here's what he told me earlier. Watch. Albert He is a pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong. In his diary, Wang recorded He's criticism against the then chief executive of Hong Kong and his dissatisfaction with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. After Wang handed that intelligence to China, He was arrested and still in prison through today. My source told me that the attorney of Hong Kong's jailed activist Albert He is also asking about the latest on the case. Flora Hua, NTD News.