A 78-year-old U.S. citizen and Hong Kong resident was on Monday convicted of espionage and sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in eastern of Suzhou, near Shanghai, China.
John Shing-Wan Leung was also stripped of his political rights after a brief trial on Monday, the Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court said in the statement.
Leung’s assets worth about 500,000 Yuan, 72,000 dollars, were also confiscated.
The court gave no specifics of his alleged offence, but said Suzhou’s National Security Bureau began investigating Leung on April 15, 2021, on suspicion of spying.
A U.S. embassy spokesperson said in a statement that it was aware of the case, but due to privacy considerations had no further comment.
“The Department of State has no greater priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas”, the spokesperson added.
The sentencing comes amid growing tensions between China and the U.S. on a number of fronts, from accusations of Chinese spying and human rights abuses, to U.S. efforts to build up military alliances to curb China’s ambitions toward Taiwan and in the Pacific.
As the relationship between the two countries deteriorated in recent years, the United States has also increasingly taken action against Chinese nationals accused of spying.
Last week, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan met China’s top diplomat Wang Yi to try to keep open channels of communication and to stablise the relationship between the superpowers.
Hong Kong and Chinese media outlets reported that Leung had once been a senior member of a Chinese patriotic group in the United States called the U.S.-China Friendship Promotion Association.
