Federal prosecutors have charged five Chinese nationals with allegedly lying and trying to conceal their actions, more than a year after authorities spotted them near a remote Michigan military site where thousands of troops had gathered for summer drills.
The five defendants, who were undergraduate students at the University of Michigan at the time of the incident in August 2023, left the United States after graduating in May, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court on Oct. 1. Arrest warrants have been issued for the five individuals.
“The defendants are not in custody. Should they come into contact with U.S. authorities, they will be arrested and face these charges,” Gina Balaya, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit, said on Oct. 2.
The incident happened at Camp Grayling, the largest Army National Guard training facility in the United States, during last summer’s annual Northern Strike training event.
According to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, more than 7,000 participants from 25 states, one territory, and four countries took part in the military exercises.
The five defendants are not charged for what happened at Camp Grayling. Instead, they are accused of misleading investigators about their trip to the location and conspiring to delete photos from their cellphones.
The case highlights concerns in Congress about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) espionage efforts, either through buying land near U.S. military sites or breaching military bases.
In 2020, three Chinese nationals were sentenced to prison terms for trespassing and taking photos of the Naval Air Station Key West in Florida.
In July, a Chinese student pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors under the Espionage Act for using a drone to take photos of naval shipyards in Virginia.
Encounter
The five defendants are Xu Zhekai, Guan Renxiang, Zhu Haoming, Tao Jingzhe, and Liang Yi, according to the complaint.
On Aug. 13, 2023, the five were confronted after midnight at a boat launch on Bear Lake at Camp Grayling by a sergeant major with the Utah National Guard. According to the FBI, one of the defendants said, “We are media,” before they gathered their belongings and agreed to leave the area.
The Utah National Guard had a tactical operations center near Bear Lake. The center had tents, antennae, satellite dishes, vehicles, and generators, all of which were “visible from the location” where the sergeant major encountered the five defendants, according to the complaint.
The five had reserved a room at a nearby hotel a week before they were spotted.
On Dec. 18, 2023, Guan arrived at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport to board a flight to South Korea en route to China. He told U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials that he and his classmates had taken a trip to northern Michigan four months earlier “to see shooting stars,” the FBI said.
In Guan’s possession was an external hard drive containing two images of “military vehicles” taken on the same night as the encounter with the National Guard officer, according to the complaint.
On March 3, FBI agents interviewed Xu, Tao, Zhu, and Liang separately at Chicago O’Hare International Airport after they arrived on a flight from Iceland. According to the FBI, the four said they were in Michigan in August 2023 to “see a meteor shower.”
Investigators said the five defendants discussed deleting photos from their phones and cameras on the Chinese social media app WeChat.
The five “appear to have coordinated their statements regarding the incident and discussed the deletion of photos from their electronic devices to prevent them being seen by law enforcement,” according to the complaint.
Concerns About Espionage
Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, said in a post on social media platform X on Oct. 2 that the case “shows once again that CCP espionage can happen anywhere in America and we must be vigilant.”
“The CCP obviously has an interest in Camp Grayling and this is further evidence it would be a mistake for Michigan leaders to allow Gotion to build in our state,” he wrote, referring to Chinese battery maker Gotion’s plans to build a manufacturing plant in the state.
“State funding for Gotion’s plan to bring Chinese nationals to Mecosta County is an open invitation for more spying. For national security reasons, Governor Whitmer and the legislature must revoke state funding for Gotion immediately.”
Whitmer has said that Gotion’s plant, which is set to be built about 100 miles from Camp Grayling, would make Michigan the “global hub of mobility and electrification.”
Moolenaar also referenced his recent report, saying that American universities “must shut down their joint institutes with Chinese universities, and enact stricter guardrails on emerging technology research.”
“American universities must realize they are a target for espionage and protect the critical taxpayer-funded research they do,” he said.
According to the report, China has gained “back-door access” to U.S. technologies through partnerships with academic research institutions over the past decade, with millions of dollars in U.S. funding indirectly going toward advancing Chinese military technology.
The FBI said the five defendants studied at the University of Michigan as part of the school’s joint program with Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in China. They began their studies for the two-year program in August 2022.
The University of Michigan states on its website that more than 150 SJTU students attend the school through dual degree or joint graduate programs every year. The two universities have also established a joint institute in China.
Canberra-based think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute, in a 2019 report highlighting the risks of research partnerships with Chinese universities, said SJTU had several links to the Chinese military and was home to three of China’s major defense laboratories.
In a speech in March 2020, Yang Zhenbin, SJTU’s party secretary, said that he would “fully support and resolutely obey the central government’s decisions” and “uphold the party’s overall leadership of the school,” according to the school’s website.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
