Man accused of running Chinese spy outpost in NYC goes on trial

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A Manhattan office in China’s Chinatown district went on trial Wednesday in Brooklyn federal court, with prosecutors portraying it as a secret Chinese police station used to target dissidents and the defense calling it a routine community service center.

U.S. prosecutors said the plain, glass-clad building sat between a hotel, a spa and a coffee shop and functioned as an overseas station, citing signage inside the site that prosecutors said read: “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, New York USA.” In court, prosecutors said the alleged operation came with instructions from Beijing to silence, harass and intimidate pro-democracy dissidents in the United States.

Lu Jianwang, 64, is a U.S. citizen who, prosecutors said, was working for the Chinese government while living in New York City. Prosecutors said he established the Chinatown outpost in 2022 after he attended a ceremony in his native Fujian province where China’s Ministry of Public Security announced it was opening 30 such secret police stations around the world.

The defense rejected the spy characterization. Lu’s lawyer, John Carman, said the case was a “mundane bureaucratic blip,” describing the site as a community center where people in the Chinese diaspora could remotely renew Chinese driver’s licenses during the COVID-19 era travel restrictions and where members could meet to play ping-pong and mahjong.

Prosecutors said the outpost shared offices with the America ChangLe Association, a community organization that Lu and his brother helped run, and that prosecutors said was described on tax forms as a “social gathering place for Fujianese people.” Prosecutors said the organization was open about its driver’s license service, but that it was still illegal under U.S. law, including the federal Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Prosecutors said Lu violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by allegedly working as a foreign agent “without asking or telling the U.S. government,” and that he kept in touch with a handler via WeChat. Prosecutors said that when the FBI raided the alleged New York outpost on Oct. 3, 2022, agents seized a computer and cellphones and looked through drawers and paperwork, including “busting into locked cabinets and a safe.”

Carman told jurors that the FBI’s raid was essentially a search that turned the site “upside down,” and he disputed that Lu was part of Chinese intelligence. Carman said evidence would show that Lu is “not a spy, not a part of Chinese intelligence services, not an agent of the Chinese government,” adding that Lu was “arrested for essentially failing to file a form.”

The trial began more than three years after authorities arrested Lu at his Bronx home, and it has played out against a larger backdrop of U.S. scrutiny of Chinese transnational influence operations. Prosecutors said Lu and a co-defendant, Chen Jinping, established the outpost after Lu attended the Fujian ceremony and that prosecutors planned to call a dissident witness who they said was targeted by the outpost.

In opening statements, prosecutors said Lu went on trial after he destroyed evidence, including WeChat messages with a purported Chinese government handler. Prosecutors said the next day after Lu was detained, he admitted to FBI agents that he established the Manhattan outpost, communicated with his handler on WeChat and deleted those messages, though Carman said neither of Lu’s two-hour FBI interviews was recorded.

Lu’s co-defendant, Chen Jinping, pleaded guilty in December 2024 to conspiracy to act as a foreign agent and is scheduled for sentencing after Lu’s trial. Lu sat at the defense table Wednesday with Baimadajie Angwang, a former NYPD officer who was cleared three years ago in a case prosecutors described as involving “intelligence asset” allegations for the Chinese government and who is working as an investigator for Lu’s defense team.

Outside the courthouse, several dozen supporters gathered, including members of Lu’s church, holding signs reading “Justice for Harry Lu” and “Chinese Americans Are Americans!” and waving small American flags as Lu and his legal team arrived.

“No one controls him,” Carman told jurors, saying that if Lu was an agent of anyone, he was an agent for his community, and he closed by telling the jury, “You have the life of an innocent man in your hands.”