China US Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The US administration has recently wielded its big judicial stick on overseas Chinese again, accusing them of "being an agent of the Chinese government," while the so-called evidences listed in the indictment turn out to be a public group photo and a gift for foreign affairs. Experts said on Tuesday that this is another example of the US trying to fabricate cases accusing China of the so-called "transnational repression" with their common tricks of weaponizing and politicizing laws, and US' law enforcing agencies have turned into "political thugs" of the White House.

People familiar with the matter told the Global Times, Liang Litang, an overseas Chinese who runs a Chinese restaurant in Boston, went to Washington for an event related to the Chinese Association together with two entourages. They contacted the Chinese Embassy in the US in the hope of visiting the Embassy.

The Embassy then registered and approved their request as per the requirements, assigned the police liaison officer in the Embassy to make corresponding arrangement, presented them with gifts after the visit, and took a group photo in front of the Embassy. The gifts were verified to be wooden police badges used for foreign exchanges. And the police liaison officer only accompanied them throughout the whole process without engaging in any official businesses.

However, the US law enforcement agencies forcibly forged Chinese traditional customs as the evidence of "recruiting spies," and Liang was arrested for allegedly serving as an agent of the Chinese government. He was indicted on May 15 for acting as an illegal agent of China.

The charge of acting as an unregistered foreign agent carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.

Experts told the Global Times that the US is trying to fabricate cases accusing China of the so-called transnational repression with their common tricks of weaponizing and politicizing laws. "Would the US administration openly take group photos of their spies or agents to be recruited in front of the US Embassy covered with security cameras?" he asked.

The US Department of Justice, the FBI and other law-enforcing departments have politicized and weaponized legal instruments and already turned into "political thugs" for the White House, abandoning the basic facts and losing their professional ethics, said the source.

However, this is not the first case brought by the US Justice Department against innocent Chinese. On April 17, the FBI arrested two Chinese-American men and accused them of "running a covert station for China's police force in New York." The same day, the US Department of Justice announced charges against 34 Chinese police officers and eight Chinese officials for "their online persecution of Chinese dissidents in the US."

The spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington Liu Pengyu said the US' prosecution of Chinese citizens under the guise of "transnational repression" is an exercise of long-arm jurisdiction on the basis of fabricated charges, which is purely political manipulation aimed at defaming China's image.

As can be seen from all those cases recently imposed by the US against Chinese, such as accusing them of acting as agents for a foreign government, transnational repression or whatever name it may take, those who are intent on maligning others will easily find a pretext, experts said.

The basic attitude of the US Department of Justice is to demonize people or issues associated with China, and even to hype them by distorting the law, which shows that the US government has no bottom line in the operation of China-related issues and even trample on the spirit of its own laws, Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The real purpose of the US administration is to fabricate something out of nothing, manipulate politics and deliberately suppress other countries. But this time, the despicable and absurd nature of the US administration has reached a new peak, which has once again refreshed people's understanding of the hypocrisy of the US judiciary and the bottomless practice of its double standards, experts noted.