Amid the ongoing stand-off between the United States and China, a Singaporean has pleaded guilty for working as an intelligence agent for the Chinese Army.
According to the US officials, Jun Wei Yeo, also known as Dickson Yeo, was charged with using his political consultancy in America as a front to collect information from U.S. government and military workers, reported Reuters.
Jun Wei Yeo was found to have set up a fake consulting site to solicit information for the Chinese intelligence, following the FBI investigations on dozens of visa holders in relation to any kind of Chinese spying. The Singapore man will be sentenced in October by the Justice Department.
In other incident, a Chinese researcher, Juan Tang, who was a refuge in the San Francisco consulate, was accused of hiding her ties to China’s military service and was detained in California. She was among four Chinese nationals charged with visa fraud for allegedly lying about serving in China’s People’s Liberations Army.
Earlier this week, United States ordered the shutdown of Chinese Consulate in Houston within 72 hours, after nearly four decades in operation. The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated in his speech that the China’s consulate was working as a hub of spying and intellectual property theft, while also calling for an end to the blind engagement with China.
Following this, on Friday, the Chinese government ordered the US to close the consulate in Chengdu, claiming the US’s actions to have seriously breached international law, gravely harming the US-China relationship.
Tension between the nuclear powers has been escalating in the past few weeks, with President Donald Trump’s administration ramping up their aggressive tactics, including the decision to increase their military presence in the South China Sea.
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