In late October, U.S. prosecutors charged thirteen Chinese agents for conducting illegal operations in the United States. Unfortunately, only two of the suspects are in custody. The other eleven remain free to continue their espionage and intimidation operations against American victims from the same place they usually operate—China.
These cases illustrate how far behind U.S. law enforcement is in its fight to defend America from assaults by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). While indictments against Chinese agents are becoming more common, the perpetrators are rarely brought to justice.
The October charges resulted from three separate cases. Seven defendants were charged in connection with a scheme to force a Chinese national residing in the United States to return to China to face prosecution under Operation Fox Hunt. In a separate case, two China-based intelligence officers were charged for attempting to solicit information from a U.S. government employee to obstruct the criminal prosecution of a Chinese firm understood to be Huawei. In a third case, four Chinese nationals were charged for operating a long-running campaign to recruit Americans to act as Chinese agents.
Cases like these would be effective if the objective were simply to keep Chinese spies out of the United States. Indeed, the arrest warrants all but ensure these defendants will never step foot on American soil. But that doesn’t stop them from victimizing Americans, as most of their activity is carried out remotely from China.
Do More To Prevent Chinese Espionage
Spies in Chinese cities routinely target American citizens through social media. They also send them “consulting” proposals via email, which they cushion in legitimate-sounding business contracts. Sometimes they even invite their attempted recruits on all-expense-paid trips to China, where they wine and dine and entice them to provide information and services that benefit Beijing.
Repatriation efforts targeting both actual fugitives and outspoken dissidents residing abroad are managed by agents in China who coerce victims by punishing their family members. They also harass victims by sending threatening social media messages and hiring local thugs to intimidate them.
These remote tactics were all on display in the October cases. Clearly, agents are often just as dangerous sitting in front of a computer in China as they are walking the streets of American cities. But U.S. law enforcement currently appears more interested in exposing their activities than fighting them.
Even when federal agents have the opportunity to arrest a spy, they rarely do so. When senior Chinese agents travel to the United States, federal law enforcement has an inexplicable habit of surveilling their activities and then allowing them to return to China before pressing charges. For example, one of the October indictments details how a defendant met with a co-conspirator in the United States back in 2016. The FBI was clearly onto the pair, and it recorded conversations about their work for the Chinese government. But neither was arrested, and the suspect flew back to China unimpeded. With a warrant now out for his arrest, the chance that he will return to face trial is nonexistent.
In an Operation Fox Hunt case the FBI cracked in 2020, U.S. law enforcement managed to arrest five suspects. However, one of the operation’s masterminds had been allowed to board a flight back to China three years earlier, even after Customs and Border Protection agents questioned him about the operation and found night vision goggles and other surveillance equipment in his luggage. The agents likely delayed apprehending the suspect in order to buy time to build the case, but it’s unlikely they will get another opportunity to bring him to justice. The suspect, who lived in New York at the time, hasn’t been seen in the United States since.
The U.S. government has to do more to protect the country—and the…
Read More: The United States Must Go to War Against China’s Spies