US seeks to revoke citizenship of 2 China-born men convicted in Beijing-linked cases

The US Justice Department (DOJ) is seeking to revoke the citizenship of a former Navy sailor convicted of spying for China and a Florida man convicted of conspiring to act as an agent of Beijing, it announced on Monday.

Jinchao Wei and Ping Li are among 40 people facing denaturalisation actions in what the department described as the largest batch of such filings under the Trump administration. The civil proceedings remain pending, with no determination of liability, the DOJ said.

The case against Wei was filed on September 30 in the Southern District of California, while the case against Li was filed on October 1 in the Middle District of Florida.

Wei was convicted of espionage and export offences in August 2025 and sentenced in January to 200 months in prison, or 16 years and eight months. But the same jury acquitted him of naturalisation fraud, according to the DOJ’s announcement of his sentence.

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While serving aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Essex, Wei passed photographs, technical manuals and other sensitive naval information to a Chinese intelligence officer in exchange for more than US$12,000, according to evidence presented at trial.

DOJ alleges that Wei concealed criminal conduct when he became a citizen in May 2022 through military service. It also cites his discharge under other-than-honourable conditions before completing five years of honourable service.

Li was sentenced to four years in prison in November 2024 for conspiring to act as an agent of China without notifying the US attorney general.

According to his plea agreement and court filings summarised by prosecutors, Li admitted working at the direction of China’s Ministry of State Security from at least 2012. He supplied information about Chinese dissidents, pro-democracy advocates and Falun Gong practitioners, as well as information from his employers in telecommunications and information technology.

DOJ argues that Li’s conduct shows he did not meet constitutional allegiance requirements at the time of naturalisation.

The announcement came a day after the FBI arrested Zhang Wanying, a Chinese-born US citizen, at Los Angeles International Airport on a charge of acting as an unregistered agent of Beijing.

Authorities allege that she conducted surveillance in Seattle on a close relative of a Taiwanese government official. The allegations against Zhang have not been proven, and the DOJ’s denaturalisation announcement did not include her.

US law permits courts to revoke naturalisation obtained illegally or through concealment of material facts or deliberate misrepresentation. Filing a civil complaint does not, by itself, revoke citizenship.