A Manhattan’s Chinatown office connected to a broader network of Chinese state services became the focus of a federal trial in Brooklyn, where a jury found Lu Jianwang guilty for allegedly operating an overseas Chinese “police station” without registering as a foreign agent. The jury’s decision came after a weeklong case that U.S. prosecutors framed as part of China’s crackdown on dissidents beyond its borders and that the defense portrayed as a bureaucratic or community-services matter.
The conviction, announced Wednesday, included two counts: the jury found Lu Jianwang, also known as Harry Lu, guilty of acting as an illegal foreign agent and guilty of obstructing justice. Prosecutors said the obstruction involved deleting text messages that they said contained orders from Beijing to silence, harass and intimidate pro-democracy dissidents. The jury acquitted Lu on a related conspiracy charge.
U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said in a statement after the verdict that a “police station operating in New York City at the direction of the Chinese government has been exposed,” its “sinister purpose disrupted,” and “its founder held accountable for blatantly disregarding the law and our country’s sovereignty.”
At sentencing, Lu remains free on bail while awaiting punishment that has not been scheduled. According to prosecutors’ case as described during trial, he faces up to 10 years in prison for acting as an illegal foreign agent and up to 20 years for obstruction of justice.
Lu spoke to supporters after the verdict in his native Fujianese dialect but declined to answer questions from reporters. His lawyer, John Carman, said they would appeal, arguing that prosecutors presented what he called a paperwork dispute as an international spy thriller. Carman said, outside the courthouse, “This is not espionage. This is not spying. This is not intelligence gathering,” and added, “He wasn’t charged with any of that.”
Carman said federal prosecutors “passed off a mundane paperwork case as an international spy thriller,” and described the foreign-agent charge as tied to what he said was Lu’s failure to inform the U.S. government about his work for China. The defense contended that the work was limited to helping members of the Chinese diaspora renew their Chinese driver’s licenses.
The government’s account tied the outpost’s creation to Chinese domestic security planning. Prosecutors said Lu and co-defendant Chen Jinping established the Manhattan outpost in 2022 after Lu attended a ceremony in Fujian, where China’s Ministry of Public Security announced it was opening 30 “secret police stations” around the world. Assistant U.S. Attorney Antoinette Rangel told jurors during closing arguments that China’s communist government uses the outposts to monitor people it views as enemies of its interests.
During the trial, jurors heard testimony from Xu Jie, a Chinese dissident, activist and YouTuber living in California. Prosecutors said Xu Jie was targeted by Lu’s outpost. Jurors were also shown a banner from the Chinatown location that read: “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, New York USA.”
The defense acknowledged the outpost’s community profile but disputed the government’s characterization. Carman said the outpost was essentially a community center where people could renew Chinese driver’s licenses remotely without traveling during pandemic-era restrictions. Carman also described other uses of the space, including that people would meet there to play ping-pong and mahjong. Prosecutors, however, argued that even document-renewal assistance, if tied to foreign direction and unregistered work, violates U.S. law.
The case also included details about the site’s setting and the organization associated with it. The Manhattan outpost, prosecutors said, sat between a hotel, spa and coffee shop and shared offices with the America ChangLe Association, a community group that Lu and his brother, Jimmy, helped run. The organization described itself on tax forms as a “social gathering place for Fujianese people,” Carman said, describing ChangLe as meaning “eternal joy.”
Chen pleaded guilty in December 2024 to conspiracy to act as a foreign agent. In closing, Rangel told jurors that “The police station wasn’t the defendant’s idea or initiative, this was the Chinese government,” and said, “This was the Chinese government’s plan and the defendant made it happen.” Rangel also argued that the messages recovered from Lu’s phone showed he was “in lockstep with what the Chinese government tasked him to do,” and pointed to prosecutors’ claim that Lu deleted those messages after FBI agents raided the outpost on Oct. 3, 2022.