A local Chinatown community leader ran a secret Chinese spy outpost out of a nondescript Manhattan office building — helping his communist handlers track a pro-democracy dissident, prosecutors charged Wednesday.
Lu Jianwang, who goes by Harry Lu, “opened a satellite office for the Chinese government in the heart of New York City,” prosecutor Lindsey Oken told jurors at the start of a Brooklyn federal court trial expected to shed light on Beijing’s alleged shadowy US influence campaign.
Lu, a Bronx resident who has been a naturalized US citizen for decades, “was living in New York City but he was working for the Chinese government,” the prosecutor added.
The alleged Chinese agent took orders from China’s Ministry of Public Security to monitor a Big Apple-based dissident from the glass-windowed six-story building at 107 East Broadway — where a banner was hung proudly announcing that the site was a “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station,” the feds allege.
But a lawyer for the 64-year-old leader of the America Changle Association — which advocates for New Yorkers hailing from China’s Fujian Province — shot back that the alleged secret “police station” was merely an innocuous community center where locals gathered to play ping pong and mahjong.
The community relied on Lu for help renewing their Chinese driver’s licenses remotely as travel back to their homeland was shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, defense lawyer John Carman claimed.
“He’s not an agent of Chinese intelligence … He’s an agent of the people of his community,” Carman told jurors.
The dueling claims came at the start of a one-week trial where the alleged spy is expected to testify. Lu has pleaded not guilty to charges of failing to register as a foreign agent and obstructing justice by allegedly deleting WeChat messages with his purported Beijing handler.
With an American flag pin affixed to the lapel of his dark suit, Lu didn’t betray much emotion as he listened to a Fujianese translation of the opening statements through an earpiece Wednesday morning.
He was joined at the defense table by Baimadajie Angwang, a former NYPD officer who was cleared in 2023 of similar federal charges accusing him of spying on behalf of China. Angwang has sued to get his NYPD job back and is serving as an investigator for Lu’s defense team.
More than 50 of Lu’s community supporters — one of whom toted a sign to court reading “Justice for Harry Lu” — watched on from the courtroom gallery.
Lu was arrested at his Bronx home in 2023, along with co-defendant Chen Jinping, in what the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District called a sweeping crackdown on China’s efforts to silence regime dissenters across the globe.
Lu and Jinping opened the Chinatown site in 2022 after Lu returned from a ceremony in China where government officials announced that they’d be opening 30 of the secret outposts at sites all over the world, Oken said Wednesday.
Chen pleaded guilty in December 2024 to a charge of conspiring to act on China’s behalf without telling US authorities. He’s out on bond and will be sentenced after Lu’s trial.
