A man the feds say is a spy for the Chinese government was arrested by the FBI in Boston.
Litang Liang, who was born in 1959 making him 63 or 64, has been federally indicted on conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government and acting as an agent of a foreign government without notice to the attorney general.
He was arrested on Tuesday, the same day his indictment was unsealed.
Liang made an initial appearance in federal court in Boston where an interpreter was sworn in and he was informed of the charges against him. Aziza Hawthorne of the federal defender’s office in Boston was provisionally appointed for Liang’s defense for this hearing only. Magistrate Judge Jennifer C. Boal scheduled an arraignment and detention hearing for May 11 at 2:30 p.m.
The indictment alleges that Liang worked with a handler and additional People’s Republic of China officials — the number of people listed as “PRC OFFICIAL” in the document numbers at least 7 — out of the consulate in New York City to spill the tea on a number of Boston-area people the Chinese Communist Party finds problematic.
Among the allegations are that Liang provided the Chinese government — through his New York consulate handler — on various organizations and people in Boston, organized a counter-protest against pro-democracy Chinese dissidents in Boston and sending off dossiers on potential recruits for the PRC’s Ministry of Public Security. The activity is alleged to have taken place from the summer of 2018 through 2022.
Some of his alleged activity, including photographing anti-PRC dissidents in front of the Boston Public Library in September 2019, put faces and names to U.S.-based activists who he described as a “bunch of clowns trying to cause trouble.”
He communicated both by telephone and the phone app WeChat, the indictment says. WeChat is described in the document as the international version of the Chinese app Weixin, a social media application with more than a billion active users, which stores its data on servers off U.S. shores.
The first alleged interaction between Liang and his PRC handler came in July 2018, when Liang purportedly let the official know that someone had destroyed PRC flags in Chinatown and he allegedly named a former “student activist” he believed to be responsible.
The next month, Liang purportedly inquired about the “political standing” of a local lawyer, which shows an early inroads into local pro-democracy or pro-Taiwan organizations that make up much of the allegations against him. The indictment alleges that he reported back on the membership — including names — and activities of several such local groups.
As his alleged spying activity broadened, he was put in touch with increasingly senior PRC officials, including an official who directed a subsidiary of the United Front Work Department, an organization that the federal U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission says exists to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Community Party.”
By January 2019, the feds allege, Liang had co-founded the New England Alliance for the Peaceful Unification of China and began serving as its vice president. The organization was first organized in Quincy on Jan. 22, 2019, according to state corporation filings. Liang last appeared on the organizations 2021 annual report filed with the state, but neither his name nor the position of “Vice President” appears on the 2022 filing.
That year, the Hong Kong government in collusion with the PRC proposed a Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance bill allowing for the extradition of protesters in Hong Kong to be sent over to the mainland for criminal prosecution, which sparked worldwide rallies in support of the Hong Kong protesters, which included a rally in Boston on Aug. 18, 2019, called “Boston Stands for Hong Kong.”
The indictment alleges that Liang, under orders from PRC officials, organized a major counter-demonstration to that rally.