A New York man accused of operating a covert Chinese police station in Manhattan's Chinatown was convicted Wednesday of acting as an illegal foreign agent and destroying text messages from a Chinese government handler. Lu Jianwang, 64, was acquitted of a related conspiracy charge in a case that highlighted tensions between U.S. concerns about China's crackdown on dissidents and defense arguments that prosecutors exaggerated a bureaucratic mistake.
Case Background
Lu, also known as Harry Lu, spoke to supporters as he left Brooklyn federal court but declined to answer reporters' questions. His lawyer, John Carman, said federal prosecutors dressed up a mundane paperwork case with specious suggestions of spying. Lu remains free on bail pending sentencing, which has not been scheduled.
According to prosecutors, Lu and co-defendant Chen Jinping established the outpost in 2022 after Lu attended a ceremony in China's Fujian province where the Ministry of Public Security announced it was opening 30 such secret police stations worldwide. China uses these outposts to monitor people it views as enemies of its interests. Jurors were shown a banner from the location that read: "Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, New York USA."
Defense and Prosecution Arguments
Chen pleaded guilty in December 2024 to conspiracy to act as a foreign agent. Lu's lawyers contended the outpost was actually a community center where Chinese diaspora members could remotely renew driver's licenses during pandemic travel restrictions and play ping-pong and mahjong. Prosecutors argued that even if Lu's only connection to China was through driver's licenses, that violated the foreign agent law.
The outpost shared offices with the America ChangLe Association, a community organization Lu and his brother Jimmy helped run. The organization described itself on tax forms as a "social gathering place for Fujianese people." ChangLe means "eternal joy," Carman said.
FBI Raid and Evidence
The FBI, alerted by a report from an organization monitoring Chinese transnational repression, raided the alleged outpost on Oct. 3, 2022, seizing computers and cellphones. The next day, prosecutors said, Lu admitted to FBI agents that he established the outpost, communicated with a handler via WeChat, and deleted those messages.
