A Chinese spy who ran a “secret police station” in Manhattan to help Beijing target government dissidents faces up to five years in prison after pleading guilty Wednesday to acting as an illegal foreign agent, federal prosecutors said.
Chen Jinping, 60, admitted in Brooklyn federal court to “conspiring” to act on behalf of the People’s Republic of China without telling US authorities.
Chen fessed up to removing an online article about the alleged police station — which prosecutors say occupied a full floor of a Chinatown building near the Manhattan Bridge — for his Beijing handlers in September 2022.
“I knowingly agreed to act as a foreign agent, for a foreign government,” he told Judge Nina Morrison, speaking through an interpreter.
But he acted cagey when the judge asked him which government he was working for.
Chen briefly tried in vain to sidestep the question by repeating “the government” — and only admitted that he’d been representing China after he was pressed again by the judge.
“At the time I did this, I did not inform the attorney general that I was acting as a foreign agent, and I was not registered as a foreign agent,” he added.
Chen and his alleged partner “Harry” Lu Jianwang, 61, were arrested in April 2023 and charged with opening the since-closed covert outpost in early 2022.
Lu, whose case is still pending, allegedly helped Chinese security officials locate dissidents who were living in the US, court papers claim.
The duo tried to cover up their crimes by deleting their communications with an official of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security after learning that they were under investigation, the feds allege.
The arrests were part of what prosecutors at the time called a sweeping crackdown on Beijing’s influence campaign in the US.
“This prosecution reveals the Chinese government’s flagrant violation of our nation’s sovereignty by establishing a secret police station in the middle of New York City,” US Attorney for the Eastern District Breon Peace said in a statement at the time.
Peace said Wednesday that Chen’s guilty plea reflects a “priority” of his office, “to counteract the malign activities of foreign governments that violate our nation’s sovereignty.”
Chen is set to be sentenced May 30, 2025.
