Three men were convicted of various charges Tuesday in a trial showcasing U.S. claims that China has engineered pressure campaigns on American soil to bully expatriates into returning home, part of an effort called “Operation Fox Hunt.”
American private investigator Michael McMahon and two Chinese citizens living in the U.S. — Zheng Congying and Zhu Yong — all were accused of taking part in scare tactics aimed at a former Chinese official. He was living quietly in New Jersey, and Beijing wanted him back.
Zhu was convicted of acting as an illegal foreign agent, stalking, interstate stalking conspiracy and conspiring to act as an illegal foreign agent. Zheng was convicted of stalking and stalking conspiracy but acquitted of the other charges.
McMahon was convicted of all except conspiracy to act as a foreign agent.
The Brooklyn federal court trial was the first to result from a spate of U.S. prosecutions scrutinizing China’s Operation Fox Hunt, a nearly decade-old initiative that Beijing characterizes as a pursuit of fugitives from justice. U.S. authorities view it, at least sometimes, as an exercise in “transnational repression,” or deploying government operatives to harass, threaten and silence critics living abroad.
China has denied trying to force repatriations through intimidation and says the U.S. is maligning an effort to fight crime.
Prosecutors say pressure from Beijing was brought to bear in suburban New Jersey, where former Wuhan city official Xu Jin and his family moved in 2010. China has accused him and wife Liu Fang of taking bribes; they deny it and say they were targeted because he got crosswise with China’s Communist power structure.
According to prosecutors, Zhu, Zheng and McMahon took part in a yearslong, multipronged effort to goad Xu into going back to China. The country couldn’t officially compel him to do so, as it has has no extradition treaty with the U.S.
The defense acknowledged that Zhu, Zheng and McMahon took various actions but said the three had no idea that Beijing was allegedly behind it all.