A jury has convicted a man of acting as an illegal foreign agent and destroying text messages from a Chinese government handler, in a case centred on an alleged secret police outpost in New York City's Chinatown.
Lu Jianwang, 64, also known as Harry Lu, was acquitted of a related conspiracy charge. He remains free on bail pending sentencing, which has not yet been scheduled. His lawyer, John Carman, said prosecutors had dressed up a mundane paperwork case with specious suggestions of espionage and intelligence gathering.
Prosecutors alleged that Lu and co-defendant Chen Jinping established the outpost in Manhattan in 2022, after Lu attended a ceremony in his native Fujian province where China's Ministry of Public Security announced it was opening 30 such stations worldwide. Jurors were shown a banner from the location reading: “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, New York USA.” The outposts are used by Beijing to monitor people it views as enemies of its interests.
The defence maintained the site was a community centre where members of the Chinese diaspora could renew driver's licences remotely amid pandemic travel restrictions and socialise over ping-pong and mahjong. It shared offices with the America ChangLe Association, a community group run by Lu and his brother. Prosecutors countered that even licence renewals would be enough to violate the foreign agent law. Chen pleaded guilty in December 2024 to conspiracy to act as a foreign agent.
The FBI raided the premises on October 3, 2022, following a report from an organisation that monitors Chinese transnational repression. The next day, Lu allegedly admitted to agents that he established the outpost, kept in touch with his handler via WeChat, and had deleted those messages.
