In May 2026, a federal criminal case that has shaken Chinese-American communities and drawn international diplomatic attention entered a decisive phase at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn. The defendant, 64-year-old Lu Jianwang, also known as Harry Lu, is the former chairman of the America ChangLe Association, one of New York’s most prominent Fujianese-American community organizations. Federal prosecutors have charged him with setting up and running a Chinese Communist Party-linked “secret police station” inside the association’s Manhattan Chinatown building and acting as an unregistered foreign agent. If convicted on all counts, Lu faces up to 20 years in prison.
The trial has produced the most systematic public disclosure yet of how Beijing’s united front network penetrates Western communities and establishes parallel enforcement structures on foreign soil. Vision Times spoke with You Feiyu, a founding member of the Overseas Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Alliance, a U.S.-registered organization established in October 2025, and Sheng Xue, vice-chairperson of the Federation for a Democratic China and a longtime Chinese-Canadian human rights activist and journalist. Both offered detailed analysis of the case from international law, U.S. constitutional, and geopolitical perspectives.
As the trial has progressed, federal prosecutors have introduced a body of evidence that goes well beyond statutory violations and reaches into the operational logic of the CCP’s overseas united front and transnational enforcement apparatus. The U.S. Department of Justice has treated the case as a landmark prosecution of Beijing’s effort to project unlawful influence onto U.S. soil through what the department has labeled transnational repression.
How an unregistered outpost came to operate as a ‘service center’
According to the New York Post, on the trial’s opening day, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lindsey Oken laid out a clear timeline for the jury. In early 2022, acting on instructions from China’s Ministry of Public Security, Lu Jianwang established an outpost named the “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station” inside the America ChangLe Association’s building in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
Oken explained that during a return trip to China’s Fujian province in early 2022, Lu attended the launch ceremony of a global “Overseas 110” police service station program. After returning to the United States, he quickly set up the New York station inside the association’s premises.
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Defense attorney John Carman has argued that the station was established during the COVID-19 pandemic with the legitimate purpose of helping overseas Chinese citizens, cut off by travel restrictions, conduct routine administrative tasks such as remotely renewing their Chinese driver’s licenses. Carman has characterized the operation as a “good deed” performed for the community, the Wall Street Journal reported..
Prosecutors have pushed back by introducing evidence of what they describe as the operation’s hidden political function. This organization had a set of activities in the sunlight, but “the darker parts operated in secret,” Oken told the jury according to the Courthouse News Service. The evidence introduced so far shows that the station took direct orders from CCP public security officials, and that one of its core tasks was collecting, monitoring, and reporting on information about dissidents living in the United States.
Prosecutors have argued that Lu was acutely aware that the operation was illegal. On the eve of the FBI’s October 2022 raid, Lu is alleged to have deleted large volumes of WeChat communications with Chinese public security officials from his phone. “The law does not accept ‘I did not know the law’ as a defense, especially for a defendant like Lu Jianwang who has long been deeply involved in high-level political receptions,” You Feiyu told Vision Times. “His covert command relationship with Chinese public security and his subsequent destruction of evidence together form a closed legal loop of subjective intent.”
Sovereignty violation and ‘parallel enforcement on US soil’
The two experts each characterized the alleged conduct as something far more serious than a registration paperwork failure.
You Feiyu argued that under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and basic principles of international law, sovereign states are categorically prohibited from setting up any body with police functions inside another country’s territory without that country’s explicit consent.
Sheng Xue framed the case as an export of the CCP’s domestic repression infrastructure. “This kind of conduct directly violates the right to life and right to personal security protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” she said. “In essence, the CCP is taking the high-pressure persecution apparatus it uses at home and exporting it across the globe through its united front network. It is a systematic export of human rights violations.”
You Feiyu emphasized that what Lu Jianwang allegedly established was not merely an office. “It was a parallel enforcement system,” he said. “A system that conducts surveillance on U.S. soil, directly challenging the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and freedom of belief.”
For Chinese-Americans living under that pressure, Sheng Xue argued, the consequences are direct. “This kind of illegal activity uses intimidation, surveillance, and the holding of family members back home as hostages, forcing Chinese-Americans into silence out of fear of retaliation,” she said. “The result is that the constitutional due process Americans are guaranteed has been effectively suspended within specific communities. It is the equivalent of importing political persecution into the free world.”
A pattern stretching back more than a decade
The indictment lays out a record of Lu Jianwang’s cooperation with Beijing stretching back over ten years, suggesting he had long functioned as one of the CCP’s enforcement hands abroad.
The DOJ has alleged that as early as Xi Jinping’s 2015 U.S. visit, Lu organized people to travel to Washington and New York to participate in counter-demonstrations against Falun Gong practitioners. Prosecutors say Lu performed effectively enough in that role that China’s Ministry of Public Security later awarded him a commemorative plaque recognizing his contributions.
“This kind of targeted harassment of specific faith communities is designed to establish ‘thought concessions’ overseas, stripping citizens of their constitutional rights,” Sheng Xue said.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in 2018, Lu is alleged to have participated in a Beijing-directed operation to pressure a Chinese national the regime designated a “fugitive” into returning to China. The operation involved violent threats against the target and against the target’s family members living in the United States. In 2022, in the early days of the New York police station’s operation, Lu is alleged to have once again worked with Chinese public security officials, this time helping locate a pro-democracy activist living in California.
You Feiyu argued that this kind of targeted surveillance produces a chilling effect that erodes the basic sense of safety inside affected American communities. A defense built on COVID-era humanitarian motives, he said, runs against more than ten years of consistent pattern conduct.
Four tests for distinguishing legitimate community work from illegal enforcement
How to distinguish ordinary Chinese-American hometown association activity from unregistered foreign agent activity has become a recurring question at trial. You Feiyu offered Vision Times a four-part framework for making that distinction.
First, to whom the organization reports. Legitimate community organizations report to their members and to local civil affairs authorities. Illegal enforcement activity reports to a foreign country’s public security, state security, or united front department.
Second, the goals of the activity. Legitimate work operates on voluntary participation and is oriented toward fellowship and cultural exchange. Illegal enforcement activity involves compiling blacklists, conducting surveillance against dissidents, and carrying out “persuaded return” operations against targeted individuals.
Third, financial transparency. Legitimate community organizations register with U.S. authorities and operate with open financial records. Illegal foreign agent activity is often funded by covert flows of money from a foreign government.
Fourth, evidence handling. Legitimate organizations keep meeting records as a matter of compliance. Lu Jianwang’s pattern of secret communications and the systematic destruction of those communications, You Feiyu said, is a textbook signature of illegal intelligence work.
The case as a signal to similar networks worldwide
The Lu Jianwang case carries far-reaching implications well beyond New York. Sheng Xue argued that a conviction would establish an important precedent for prosecuting what she described as “non-traditional” foreign agents. “If Lu Jianwang is convicted,” she said, “it sends a clear signal to the world: even without a formal intelligence identification, conducting political interference through diaspora organizations, chambers of commerce, or charitable bodies still constitutes a serious crime. That gives Canada, the UK, Germany, and other countries currently investigating similar police stations an extremely valuable legal reference point.”
You Feiyu added that the case would push democratic countries toward closer judicial coordination against transnational repression. “As the evidence is laid out in court, law enforcement agencies in other countries will be far better equipped to identify and cut the United Front Work Department’s covert command chains operating on their soil,” he said.
Sheng Xue pointed to a third effect, on the targets of the network themselves. “For a long time, the united front network has built its deterrent power through intimidation and through holding family members hostage back in China,” she said. “Lu Jianwang’s prosecution proves that Western countries have the capacity and the will to clean out this kind of penetration. That will help frightened communities break their silence and seek legal protection, which over time will dismantle the rule of fear the CCP has built up overseas at its foundation.”
The Lu Jianwang trial is expected to continue for several days, with both sides further contesting the evidence, the defendant’s intent, and the nature of the program. The case will stand as a significant judicial reference for future prosecutions of overseas CCP enforcement networks, and is being closely watched by analysts of U.S.-China relations.
