A Chinese scholar at the University of Michigan was arrested by the FBI and charged with attempting to smuggle a biological pathogen into the United States that could be used for agricultural terrorism, according to documents unsealed in federal court on Tuesday.
Prosecutors said that Michigan scholar Yunqing Jian, along with her boyfriend, Zunyong Liu, tried to smuggle a biological pathogen into the United States last July, The Detroit News reported. The pathogen, called Fusarium graminearum, causes “head blight,” a disease that can wipe out wheat, barley, maize, and rice crops and “is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan. The pathogen can also cause “vomiting, liver damage, and reproductive defects in humans and livestock.”
U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr. accused the suspects, who include “a loyal member of the Chinese Communist Party,” of pursuing a “scheme” of “the gravest national security concerns.”
“These two aliens have been charged with smuggling a fungus that has been described as a ‘potential agroterrorism weapon’ into the heartland of America, where they apparently intended to use a University of Michigan laboratory to further their scheme,” Gorgon said.
Jian’s boyfriend was caught with the pathogen by Customs and Border Protection officers at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
“When Customs and Border Protection officers questioned Liu, he made false statements to CBP officers about the purpose of his visit to the United States, and his knowledge of the existence of the biological pathogen in his possession,” an FBI special agent wrote in the criminal filing, according to The Detroit News.
“Ultimately, Liu admitted to smuggling the pathogen and stated that he brought the pathogen into the United States so that he could conduct research on it at a laboratory at the University of Michigan where his girlfriend, Jian, worked,” the agent added.
After receiving a doctorate in plant pathogens from China’s Zhejiang University, Jian was given money through a Chinese foundation funded by the communist government to conduct post-doctoral research on Fusarium graminearum, according to prosecutors. Jian will make her first court appearance on Tuesday afternoon.
Jian’s case marks the second criminal complaint unsealed in the past week involving a Chinese citizen at the University of Michigan. Last Friday, prosecutors unsealed a criminal case against a Chinese student who illegally voted in the 2024 election. The Chinese national, who was in the United States legally, successfully obtained a ballot and cast his vote at an early voting location last October, as The Daily Wire previously reported. The Chinese student recently fled the country and went back to China, according to the criminal complaint.
Last week, the Trump administration said that is moving to “aggressively revoke” Chinese student visas, adding that the United States “will not tolerate the [Chinese Communist Party’s] exploitation of U.S. universities or theft of U.S. research intellectual property or technologies to grow its military power, conduct intelligence collection or repress voices of opposition.”