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US arrests three Chinese nationals for visa fraud

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The US has charged four Chinese nationals with visa fraud for allegedly lying about their membership of China's armed forces.

Three are under arrest while the FBI is seeking to arrest the fourth, who is said to be in China's San Francisco consulate.

FBI agents have also interviewed people in 25 US cities who have an "undeclared affiliation" with China's military.

Prosecutors say it is part of a Chinese plan to send army scientists to the US.

Singapore man admits being Chinese spy in US

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A Singaporean man has pleaded guilty in the US to working as an agent of China, the latest incident in a growing stand-off between Washington and Beijing.

Jun Wei Yeo was charged with using his political consultancy in America as a front to collect information for Chinese intelligence, US officials say.

Separately, the US said a Chinese researcher accused of hiding her ties to China's military was detained.

China earlier ordered the closure of the US consulate in Chengdu.

The move to shut down the diplomatic mission in the south-western city was in response to the US closing China's consulate in Houston.

FBI arrests Chinese researcher for visa fraud after she hid at consulate in San Francisco

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A researcher who took refuge in the Chinese consulate in San Francisco after allegedly lying to investigators about her Chinese military service was arrested and will appear in court on Monday, according to a senior Justice Department official.

According to court documents unsealed earlier this week in the Eastern District of California, Juan Tang, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, applied for a nonimmigrant J1 visa in October 2019. The visa was issued in November 2019 and Tang entered the United States a month later.

Tang allegedly made fraudulent statements on her visa application by concealing that she served in the Chinese military. The FBI concluded that Tang was a uniformed officer of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force after photographs of her were uncovered on electronic media seized in accordance with a search warrant.

Officials Push U.S.-China Relations Toward Point of No Return

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Top aides to President Trump want to leave a lasting legacy of ruptured ties between the two powers. China’s aggression has been helping their cause.

[...] China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has inflamed the fight, brushing aside international concern about the country’s rising authoritarianism to consolidate his own political power and to crack down on basic freedoms, from Xinjiang to Hong Kong. By doing so, he has hardened attitudes in Washington, fueling a clash that at least some in China believe could be dangerous to the country’s interests.

The combined effect could prove to be Mr. Trump’s most consequential foreign policy legacy, even if it’s not one he has consistently pursued: the entrenchment of a fundamental strategic and ideological confrontation between the world’s two largest economies.