DOJ says China is harboring wanted Chinese military researcher at its San Francisco consulate
By Jerry Dunleavy, Justice Department Reporter | The Washington Examiner | July 22, 2020:
The U.S. government believes that a Chinese researcher who was charged by the Justice Department with visa fraud for concealing her ties to the Chinese military is currently hiding out in China’s consulate in San Francisco.
Tang Juan was interviewed by the FBI on June 20 about her concealing her ties to the People’s Liberation Army while she was a researcher at the University of California, Davis, and the FBI executed a search of her home and her electronics media showing further evidence she’d hidden her ties to the PLA when applying for a visa. Court documents show that the bureau “assesses that, at some point following the search and interview … Tang went to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco, where the FBI assesses she has remained.”
The revelation, first reported by Axios on Wednesday, comes the same day that the United States revealed it had ordered the Chinese government to shut down its consulate in Houston.
The FBI’s assessment that the Chinese consulate in San Francisco has been harboring a fugitive from U.S. authorities was revealed in a seven-page detention memo related to another Chinese national — Chen Song, an active-duty PLA military scientist who was arrested for allegedly committing visa fraud as a researcher at Stanford University — dated July 20 and authored by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. The FBI memo argued that “as the Tang case demonstrates, the Chinese consulate in San Francisco provides a potential safe harbor for a PLA official intent on avoiding prosecution in the United States.”
The bureau said that Tang’s J-1 visa application claimed she had never served in the Chinese military, but an “open source investigation” revealed pictures of her in the uniform of the Civilian Cadre of the PLA and that she had been employed as a researcher at China’s Air Force Military Medical University. When the bureau interviewed her on June 20, Tang “denied serving in the Chinese military.” She soon fled to the nearby Chinese consulate.
“Put simply, the PRC government is intent on protecting its officials from prosecution in the United States,” DOJ’s court filing stated.
A Justice Department official told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that the U.S. has made the Chinese government aware that Tang has been charged with a crime and that she is a fugitive from the law.
“Defendant’s case is not an isolated one, but instead appears to be part of a program conducted by the PLA — and specifically, FMMU or associated institutions — to send military scientists to the United States on false pretenses with false covers or false statements about their true employment. There exists evidence in at least one of these cases of a military scientist copying or stealing information from American institutions at the direction of military superiors in China,” the DOJ memo said. “There additionally exists evidence of the PRC government instructing these individuals to destroy evidence and in coordinating efforts regarding the departure of these individuals from the United States.”
The Justice Department continued, “A PRC military official acting with the support of her government has the resources and ability to flee from the United States regardless of any restrictions this Court could impose. This is true as a general matter, but is underscored by the evidence, stemming from extremely similar cases, of a coordinated and aggressive response of the Chinese government to law enforcement activity by the United States government.”
Earlier on Wednesday, the State Department revealed it had ordered the Chinese consulate in Houston to be shut down.
“The United States will not tolerate the PRC’s violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people, just as we have not tolerated the PRC’s unfair trade practices, theft of American jobs, and other egregious behavior,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., called this “a political provocation unilaterally launched by the US side, which seriously violates international law.”
“We urge the US side to immediately revoke this erroneous decision,” the Chinese Embassy said. “Otherwise, China will have to respond with legitimate and necessary actions.”
Neither the State Department nor the Chinese Embassy responded to the Washington Examiner’s questions about the Chinese consulate in San Francisco protecting Tang from U.S. authorities.
The DOJ detention memo also discussed Xin Wang, a Chinese national arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in June while trying to flee to China, who was a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco and who revealed he’d lied on his visa application and was actually an active duty member in the PLA and employed by FMMU. Xin said he’d been instructed by his supervisor in China to document the California university’s lab to replicate it in China.
The memo also described the case of L.T., a Chinese national who was in the U.S. on a J-1 visa and was interviewed by Customs and Border Patrol at LAX, revealing that she was a researcher at Duke University while being funded by the China Scholarship Council. She was affiliated with the PLA General Hospital and PLA Medical Academy.
Another Chinese national, 29-year-old Yanqing Ye, who had studied at Boston University, was accused in January 2020 of lying to authorities about her status as a lieutenant in the PLA. She was charged with visa fraud, making false statements, and acting as an agent of a foreign government but is still at-large in China.
The Justice Department on Tuesday accused two Chinese hackers, assisted by the Chinese government’s Ministry of State Security, of seeking to steal coronavirus research and engaging in a 10-year global cybercampaign stealing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of information.
