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 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.
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.
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.”“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.”
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.
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.
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.