Student Visa Holder Convicted of Spying for China Before Joining U.S. Army

According to the findings of a federal jury in Chicago, a Chinese national who legally entered the United States on an F-1 student visa has been convicted of spying for China before attempting to enlist in the U.S. Army.

Thirty-one-year-old Chinese national Ji Chaoqun was found guilty of “conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without first notifying the Attorney General, acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China without first notifying the Attorney General, and making false statements to the U.S. Army,” reports Breitbart News.

The Chinese national was arrested and charged in 2018 after legally arriving in the U.S. on an F-1 student visa to study electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

At the trial, evidence was present that Chaoqun was participating in espionage at the behest of senior intelligence officers at the “Jiangsu Province Ministry of State Security (JSSD) — a regional department of the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of State Security.”

Breitbart News reports:

Chaoqun, federal prosecutors said, was ordered by Ministry of State Security executive Xu Yanjun to provide intelligence officers 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, prosecutors said, was to provide high-ranking Chinese officials with critical aerospace and satellite technologies being developed in the U.S.

In 2015, Chaoqun, while working as a spy, even went as far as enlisting in the U.S. Army as an E4 Specialist. However, despite actively being a Chinese spy, the Chaoqun denied working for a foreign interest and failed to disclose his relationship with high-ranking foreign military officials on his enlistment paperwork.

Because of these charges, Chaoqun now faces up to 15 years in U.S. federal prison.

Unfortunately, this shocking case is just the latest example exposing significant vulnerabilities created by the U.S. government’s unending commitment to importing hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals to fill coveted spots in American institutions of higher learning.

Breitbart concludes the article with added context on the true scale of Chinese nationals’ use of student visa programs to enter the U.S. “In fiscal year 2019, 575,720 Chinese nationals were awarded F-1 student visas — making up more than 3-in-10 of all international students granted entry to the U.S. on the visa program. Likewise, that same year, 10,658 Chinese nationals were given M-1 student visas, accounting for nearly 6-in-10 international students allowed to enter the U.S. on that visa program.”