A federal jury just convicted a 64-year-old Bronx man named Lu Jianwang — also known as "Harry Lu" — for operating a secret police station in the heart of Manhattan on behalf of Communist China's Ministry of Public Security. Not alleged. Not suspected. Convicted. After a one-week trial in federal court in Brooklyn, a jury looked at the evidence and said: yeah, the Chinese Communist Party was literally running a cop shop in Chinatown.
Remember when this was a "conspiracy theory"? Remember when anyone who warned about CCP infiltration on American soil got called xenophobic? Funny how that works.
According to Townhall, Lu was found guilty on two counts — acting as an illegal agent of the People's Republic of China and obstruction of justice for destroying evidence. He faces up to 30 years in prison when he's sentenced by United States District Judge Nina R. Morrison. His co-defendant, Chen Jinping, already pleaded guilty back in December 2024.
The operation ran out of an office building at 107 East Broadway in Manhattan's Chinatown. Starting in January 2022, Lu set up what was essentially a satellite office for China's Ministry of Public Security — the MPS — right here on American soil. His job? Collecting information on pro-democracy advocates who had fled China. People who came to America specifically to escape the CCP were being tracked and surveilled from a storefront in lower Manhattan.
When the FBI came knocking in October 2022 and searched the location, they found a blue banner that read "Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, New York, USA." They weren't even subtle about it. They hung a sign. A literal banner announcing a foreign police station operating inside the United States. You can't make this stuff up.
Joseph Nocella, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, put it plainly: "A police station operating in New York City at the direction of the Chinese government has been exposed, its sinister purpose disrupted, and its founder held accountable for blatantly disregarding the law and our country's sovereignty." He added that his office "remains resolute in protecting the rights of people seeking freedom from repression and speaking out to bring democracy, reform, and human rights to China."
James C. Barnacle, Jr., Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's New York Field Office, was equally direct. "Lu Jianwang used a police station in New York City to target PRC dissidents in furtherance of the Chinese government's political agenda," Barnacle said. "May today's verdict send a message to other foreign agents — the FBI maintains its unwavering resolve to reveal and disrupt the clandestine operations of adversarial nations."
Let's talk about the obstruction charge for a moment. When Lu realized the feds were closing in, he and his co-conspirators started deleting WeChat messages between themselves and their MPS handler. Not exactly the behavior of an innocent man running a "community outreach center" — which is how these operations are always described before the indictments drop.
This is what actual foreign interference looks like. Not a Facebook meme farm. Not a $100,000 ad buy. A physical police station, staffed by agents of a hostile foreign government, conducting surveillance operations against political dissidents on American soil. Beijing was hunting its own citizens inside our borders, and for years, anyone who said so was told to calm down.
We weren't wrong. We were early. And now there's a jury verdict to prove it.