Two Chinese nationals have been arrested and charged with spying on the US for China. Yuance Chen, who resides in Happy Valley, Oregon, and Liren Lai, a tourist who arrived in Houston in April 2025, were arrested Friday. The two are accused of spying for the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the main espionage agency of Communist China.
The indictments say that Lai recruited Chen to work for the MSS in 2021. Then, in January 2022, in Guangzhou, China, they collaborated to facilitate a dead-drop payment of at least $10,000 on behalf of the MSS. That scheme involved working with others in the U.S. to leave a backpack with the cash at a day-use locker in Livermore, California. Then, Lai and Chen began recruiting native Chinese serving in the US Navy as agents. In 2022 and 2023, they visited a Navy recruitment center in San Gabriel, California, where they took photos of a bulletin board that contained the names and hometowns of Navy recruits, in par6cular recruits who listed their hometown as “China.” The photos were then transmitted to an MSS intelligence officer in China. Any agents brought into their scheme presumably were paid using the dead-drop.
Chen and Lai have been charged with operating in the US as agents of a foreign government. If convicted, both men face a fine of up to $250,000 and up to 10 years in prison.
While aome Americans may gush over the enlistment into the American military of the foreign-born, it should be noted such enlistments might signal something other than American patriotism.
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