China sentences 78-year-old U.S. citizen to life in prison on spying charges

China sentenced a 78-year-old United States national to beingness successful situation Monday connected spying charges, successful a lawsuit that reflects the deterioration successful ties betwixt Beijing and Washington implicit caller years.

Details of the charges against John Shing-Wan Leung, who holds imperishable residency successful Hong Kong, person not been publically released.

Leung was detained April 15, 2021, by the section bureau of China's counterintelligence bureau successful the southeastern metropolis of Suzhou, according to a quality merchandise posted by the city's intermediate tribunal connected its societal media site. His detention came arsenic China had closed its borders and imposed choky home question restrictions and societal controls to combat the dispersed of COVID-19.

Such investigations and trials are held down closed doors and small accusation is released different than vague accusations of infiltration, gathering secrets and threatening authorities security.

Relations betwixt Washington and Beijing are astatine their lowest successful decades amid disputes implicit trade, technology, quality rights and China’s progressively assertive attack toward its territorial claims involving self-governing Taiwan and the South China Sea. High-level authorities visits person been connected clasp and U.S. companies are delaying large investments amid mixed-messaging from Beijing.

The sentencing comes as U.S. President Joe Biden is traveling to Hiroshima, Japan, for the Group of Seven large concern nations summit, followed by a sojourn to Papua New Guinea, a Pacific land federation successful a portion wherever China has sought to summation its economic, subject and diplomatic influence. After Beijing’s gains successful the area, the U.S. and its Asia-Pacific partners stepped up their determination presence, offering investments and fiscal enactment rivaling those furnished by China.

Now the world’s second-largest economy, China is expanding its footprint successful ports, railways and different infrastructure from Europe to Southeast Asia and beyond.

While the Suzhou tribunal offered nary denotation of a necktie to wide China-U.S. relations, spying charges are highly selective and grounds backing them up is not released. That is modular signifier among astir countries, who privation to unafraid their idiosyncratic connections, networks and entree to information.

However, China's authoritarian governmental strategy and the ruling Communist Party's implicit power implicit ineligible matters, civilian nine and state of accusation forestalls demands for further information, arsenic good arsenic tribunal appeals.

The U.S. Embassy had nary contiguous remark connected Leung's detention. The authorities of Hong Kong, a erstwhile British colony that reverted to Chinese power successful 1997, besides had nary connection connected the case.

When it was handed implicit to Chinese control, Hong Kong was promised it would clasp its financial, societal and governmental liberties, but Beijing has fundamentally scuttled that committedness since cracking down connected pro-democracy protesters and imposing a sweeping nationalist information law in 2020.

Chinese nationalist information agencies person also raided the offices of overseas concern consulting firms in Beijing and different cities arsenic portion of an ongoing crackdown connected overseas businesses that supply delicate economical data.

Foreign companies operating successful China person travel nether expanding unit arsenic Xi Jinping's authorities tightens power implicit the economy. That stands successful stark opposition to efforts to lure backmost overseas investors aft draconian COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were lifted astatine the opening of the year.