The PRC's Criminal Activity in the U.S. Will Not Be Tolerated

The PRC's Criminal Activity in the U.S. Will Not be Tolerated

The United States’ relationship with the People’s Republic of China is multifaceted, as State Department Spokesperson Ned Price has noted. Although the relationship is primarily based on competition, he said, “We seek to cooperate with the PRC when it is in America’s national interests to do so. … There are also elements of this relationship that are adversarial.”

As Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said, the PRC is becoming more repressive at home and provocative abroad. The PRC seeks to advance an illiberal order, as is evident by the recent charges announced by the U.S. Department of Justice against 13 PRC nationals for criminal activity in the United States.

The first case involved the attempt by PRC intelligence officers to obstruct a U.S. criminal prosecution of a PRC-based telecommunications company. They tried, but failed, to bribe a U.S. law enforcement employee to steal confidential information, including information regarding witnesses and trial evidence. “This was an egregious act by the PRC intelligence officers to shield a [PRC] company from accountability and to undermine the integrity of our judicial system,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

In the second case, the Justice Department charged three PRC intelligence officers and another PRC national with trying to direct individuals in the United States to further the PRC’s intelligence mission. They did this for ten years through a sham PRC academic institute, in order, among other purposes, to procure U.S. technology and equipment and to stop protests in the United States that would have been embarrassing to the PRC government.

In the third case, the Justice Department charged seven individuals, working on behalf of the PRC, for a multi-year campaign of threats to force a U.S. resident to return to China. The attempt was part of the PRC’s extralegal effort, called Operation Fox Hunt, to bring back to the PRC alleged fugitives who have fled to foreign countries. Many of them have been critics of the PRC.

“As these cases demonstrate, the government of China sought to interfere with the rights and freedoms of individuals in the United States and to undermine our judicial system that protects those rights. They did not succeed,” declared Attorney General Garland. “The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by any foreign power to undermine the Rule of Law upon which our democracy is based.”