By: John Binder
Ji Chaoqun, a 31-year-old Chinese national who arrived in the U.S. on a student visa, was sentenced to eight years in federal prison this week for spying for China, the Department of Justice announced.
As Breitbart News reported, Chaoqun was convicted last year on one count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government, one count of acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China, and one count of making false statements to the U.S. Army.
Chaoqun was arrested and charged in 2018 after having arrived in the U.S. on an F-1 student visa to study electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois.
Evidence at trial showed that Chaoqun, while in the U.S., was working at the direction of high-ranking intelligence officers at the Jiangsu Province Ministry of State Security (JSSD) — a regional department of the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of State Security.
Chaoqun was ordered by Ministry of State Security executive Xu Yanjun to provide intelligence officers with background information on Chinese citizens living in the U.S. who could be recruited to work for the JSSD while they worked for U.S. defense contractors.
The goal of the espionage operation was to provide high-ranking Chinese officials with critical aerospace and satellite technologies being developed in the U.S.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/01/26/chinese-spy-on-student-visa-who-enlisted-in-u-s-army-sentenced-to-eight-years-in-prison/