Chinese court sentences elderly US citizen to life in prison on spying charges
Mike Brest
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An elderly American citizen who is a Hong Kong permanent resident has been sentenced to life in prison by a Chinese court.
John Shing-Wan Leung, 78, was detained on April 15, 2021, by state security authorities in Jiangsu province, and on Monday, the Intermediate People’s Court in the eastern city of Suzhou convicted him of espionage charges and gave him a life sentence. Many details of the case remain unknown.
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“The Department of State has no greater priority than the safety and security of US citizens overseas,” a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing told CBS News. “Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment.”
The jailing of an American could strain already tense relations between Beijing and Washington.
Chinese officials have snubbed U.S. requests for high-level communication dating back to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponing his trip to China in early March after Beijing was caught operating a surveillance balloon that traversed the continental United States before the U.S. military shot it down off the coast of South Carolina. Following the incident, Chinese leaders, specifically its military leaders, began ignoring U.S. outreach.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Chinese Communist Party Politburo member and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission Wang Yi last week, while the White House’s readout of the meeting said it was a “part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage competition.”
A senior administration official told reporters that Sullivan mentioned the three American civilians the administration considers wrongfully detained — Mark Swidan, Kai Li, and David Lin — by name in his meeting. China’s Jiangmen Intermediate Court denied Swidan’s appeal and upheld his death penalty with a two-year suspended death sentence last month.
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Human rights activist and lawyer Guo Feixiong, also known as Yang Maodong, was sentenced to eight years in prison on Thursday for essays he wrote and a website he created.
“We condemn the reported sentencing of human rights activist and lawyer Guo Feixiong, also known as Yang Maodong,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement. “The PRC government sentenced Mr. Guo to eight years of imprisonment for his peaceful advocacy work on behalf of the people of the PRC. Our diplomats were blocked from attending his trial in Guangzhou on May 11. We urge the PRC to live up to its international commitments, give its citizens due process, respect their human rights and fundamental freedoms including freedom of speech, and end the use of arbitrary detentions and exit bans.”