U.S. citizen sentenced for spying for Beijing highlights reach of China’s security service

A naturalized U.S. citizen who immigrated from China has been sentenced to four years in prison after conspiring to act as a agent of the Chinese government, highlighting the broad reach of Beijing’s security service and strategy of co-opting immigrants for intelligence gathering, according to the Justice Department. 

The plea agreement and court filings announced Monday show China’s Ministry of State Security – the Communist-run country's intelligence service – used operative Peng Li as a “cooperative contact” in the decades since he moved to the United States while he worked for a major U.S. telecommunications company and an international information technology company, the agency says. 

In recent years, China has emerged as the most prolific intelligence threat to the United States. The country has engaged in corporate espionage, intellectual property theft, and personnel information breaches going back decades. 

The MSS is also noted for recruiting Chinese nationals residing abroad as assets to gather information, keep tabs on dissidents and influence expatriate communities. 

Peng Li, who lived in Florida, reportedly worked for decades at U.S.-based Verizon and subsequently for the Indian company InfoSys, exemplifies the MSS’s strategy of co-opting Chinese residing abroad for intelligence work. 

In his role at the companies, Li, under the direction of MSS officers, obtained information that was of interest to the Chinese government. This included information about Chinese dissidents, members of the minority religious movement known as the Falun Gong, and U.S.-based non-governmental organizations, according to the DOJ. 

His contact in the security service was a former schoolmate with whom he attended high school and college. Li remained friends with the officer after he moved to the United States decades ago, according to the Tampa Bay Times. 

Li also discussed sensitive cybersecurity and hacking with an MSS during his several trips back to China. 

Recently, the U.S. government discovered that a Chinese hacking group named Salt Typhoon orchestrated a wide-ranging breach of American telecommunications networks that reportedly permits Beijing to listen in on telephone calls and read text messages.

Though much of the information Li provided to the MSS was publicly available, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Marcet says it is impossible to assess the harm to American national security. Some of the information Li forwarded to his contact was related to cybersecurity matters. 

“For more than 10 years, the defendant knowingly and willfully collaborated with a hostile foreign intelligence agency dedicated to undermining the United States’ national security,” the prosecutors wrote. “China’s intelligence activities are widely considered to be among the greatest long-term threats to the United States’ national security, intellectual property and economic vitality.”

In court, Li said that he did not understand what he had done was against U.S. law at the time. 

“Looking back now, I realize how stupid and ignorant I was,” he said. 

But Li is just one of many private citizens working to assist China’s vast espionage effort against its chief rival, the United States, the prosecutors in the case said. 

“The Chinese government doesn’t just have one Mr. Li,” Marcet said, likening Beijing’s long-term strategy against the United States to “death by a thousand cuts.”

An analysis on Chinese espionage since 2000 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found Beijing frequently employed private citizens or non-Chinese actors to achieve intelligence collection in addition to hacking. 

For the espionage cases in which the organization could identify both the actor and intent, CSIS found that 41% of espionage cases included private Chinese citizens. Another 10% were “non-Chinese actors (usually U.S. persons recruited by Chinese officials).” 

Together, the cases made up just more than half of all espionage recorded espionage incidents, followed closely by cyber espionage, which was involved in 46% of cases. 

In October, the Justice Department charged five University of Michigan students from China after the National Guard discovered them in close proximity to a base hosting exercises. At the time they were let go and claimed to be members of the media. 

However, the DOJ later found the Chinese nationals had planned the trip 200 miles from where they studied at the university to take photos of military vehicles at Camp Grayling. They were charged last month over their alleged attempts to cover up their real reason for traveling so close to the military base. Warrants were issued for their arrest, though the individuals’ whereabouts are unknown, Just the News previously reported. 

Like the Florida case, the Michigan episode, one local expert said at the time, highlighted the United States’ continued vulnerabilities to Chinese Communist Party espionage. 

“This is the third significant case of Chinese nationals charged with espionage by the FBI in the State of Michigan in recent years,” former Ambassador and current Director of the Michigan-China Economic and Security Review Initiative Joseph Cella said in a statement posted to the group’s X account. 

“It shows the massive gaps in our national security and the urgent need for, on a whole of society and whole of government, including the states, to be on the proper footing commensurate to counter these espionage threats,” he continued. 

Cella’s group has long warned of national security threats in the vicinity of Camp Grayling where the China-linked company, Gotion, plans to build an electric vehicle battery plant. 

Their plans have spurred resistance from the local community and its dealings with the local Green Charter Township board are marred by accusations of bribery and conflicts of interest. 

Cella says the charges against these Chinese nationals related to apparent attempts to spy on Camp Grayling vindicates the widespread concerns about Gotion’s proposed plant, which security experts previously testified would almost certainly be used as a launch pad for espionage. 

In a similar case in 2020, two students were arrested in Key West, Florida, after driving on to the Sigsbee Annex Naval Air Station and photographing the property, including military structures.

A recent House Committee on Homeland Security probe into Chinese espionage found that from Jan. 2021 to Oct. 2024 there have been more than 50 Chinese-linked espionage events in 20 states.

“The Chinese Communist Party is not satisfied with destroying freedom and repressing its citizens within its own borders. Beijing has continually encroached upon American sovereignty to spy, intimidate, and harass not only defectors, but even American citizens,” said Rep. Mark Green, the committee chairman.