A British businessman who disappeared from public view in China in 2018 was sentenced to five years in prison in 2022, China's Foreign Ministry said on Friday in its first public acknowledgment of the case.

The businessman, Ian J. Stones, had lived in China since the 1970s and worked for companies such as General Motors and Pfizer. For years after he disappeared, there was no public information about his whereabouts, although some in the business community privately discussed his secret detention.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Mr. Stones was convicted in 2022 of “purchasing and unlawfully providing intelligence for an organization or individual outside China.” Mr Stones' appeal against the verdict was rejected in September 2023, spokesman Wang Wenbin said.

Mr. Wang responded to questions from reporters at a regularly scheduled news conference after The Wall Street Journal reported Mr. Stones' case on Thursday.

“The Chinese courts handled the trial strictly in accordance with the law,” Mr. Wang said, adding that China “protects the lawful rights of Chinese and foreign parties.”

It is unclear when Mr. Stones will be released and whether he will be credited with time served before his conviction.

Laura Stones, Mr. Stones' daughter, did not respond to a request for comment. But she told The Wall Street Journal that Chinese authorities had not given her and British embassy staff access to legal documents in the case, nor allowed them to attend the trial.

The revelation is likely to heighten concerns among foreign companies about the risks of operating in China in an increasingly insular political environment led by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the country's powerful security agencies.

China revised its already sweeping counterintelligence law last year to expand the definition of espionage and has repeatedly warned in recent months about the dangers of interactions with foreigners. Officials also raided the offices of several U.S. companies last year and arrested some Chinese employees.

Foreign governments have sometimes accused China of arresting foreigners as political pawns, as in the case of two Canadians arrested in 2018 after Canada arrested a prominent Chinese technology executive. An Australian businessman and writer, Yang Hengjun, remains in custody in China, and an Australian journalist, Cheng Lei, was released in October. Both were charged with unrelated national security offenses and have denied wrongdoing.

There is no official tally of the number of foreigners detained in China. Information about the charges against them is usually very limited. While the governments or relatives of detained foreigners sometimes speak out about their cases, some remain silent, possibly hoping to negotiate with Beijing behind the scenes.

Mr. Stones, who is in his 70s, has worked as a senior manager for General Motors Asia, where he helped expand into China in the 1990s, and as a manager in China for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. At the time of his detention, he had been working as a consultant for more than a decade, advising investors on deals, regulations and disputes in China, according to his LinkedIn page, which is no longer available online.

With his decades of experience in the country and his fluent knowledge of Chinese, he was well known among Western investors and executives in Beijing. On LinkedIn, Mr. Stones said that Navisino Partners, a consulting firm where he was a partner, specialized in “finding solutions to tough challenges, structuring deals, workouts and turnarounds.”

He also had relationships with Chinese government agencies; he had presented this to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, according to an annual report report in 2007 by The Conference Board, a New York-based business research group where he was a senior advisor.

The circumstances surrounding Mr Stones' arrest remain opaque, and it is unknown what communications took place between the British and Chinese governments. The British Foreign Office declined to comment.

Mr Stones' detention coincides with a period in which the British government has taken a tougher stance on China, often siding with critical positions taken by the United States. In 2020, it banned Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications equipment company, from involvement in Britain's new high-speed wireless network, a decision that Beijing condemned.

London's ties with Beijing have also deteriorated over China's ongoing crackdown on civil rights in Hong Kong, a former British colony. Britain has also criticized China for its oppression of Muslims in the Xinjiang region, its military pressure on Taiwan and its continued partnership with Russia despite the war in Ukraine.

Like former President Donald J. Trump, Lt. Col. Robert Birchum was accused of mishandling classified documents in Florida. Like the former president, he was charged with violating the espionage law.

But unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Birchum, 55, a highly decorated Air Force intelligence officer, took full responsibility. His lawyer said he expressed “true remorse”. He even collaborated with investigators, providing information about how he kept hundreds of classified papers in his home, foreign office, and storage pod for nearly a decade.

Despite all that, Mr Birchum was jailed for another three years this month when he was sentenced.

The case and others like it are warning signs for Mr. Trump, who faces 31 counts of deliberately withholding national defense secrets, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The former president has also been charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, corrupt plans to conceal information from the government and lying to investigators.

Eric Roper, Mr Birchum’s attorney, said Mr Trump was clearly in legal jeopardy.

“Yes, he certainly faces some serious consequences, such as jail time if convicted,” Mr Roper said. “The allegations are serious, as evidenced by my client’s conviction and others. And my client had no aggravating factors.”

Unlike Mr. Birchum, whose sentence was most likely reduced because he cooperated with prosecutors and was not charged with orchestrating a cover-up, Mr. Trump has shown no willingness to concede any grounds. He has so far said he has done nothing wrong and is launching a strong attack on federal prosecutors.

The administration has accused Mr. Trump of taking hundreds of documents, many of them highly confidential, from the White House when he left office in 2021. Prosecutors tried to recover the documents, but Mr. Trump resisted, prompting the government to order a search. warrant for Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate.

In a 49-page indictment, unsealed on Friday, the administration describes 31 classified documents Mr. Trump had in his possession regarding military and nuclear capabilities of the United States and abroad. Other documents contain information about military contingency plans, including plans for a possible US attack on Iran.

Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Trump conspired with Walt Nauta, his assistant, to obstruct the investigation by hiding documents in a bathroom and other locations in Mar-a-Lago after receiving a subpoena. They also accused Mr. Trump of causing his lawyers to provide false information to the government that all documents had been accounted for.

During his first run for president, Mr. Trump repeatedly berated Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, for using a personal email server during her time as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama.

“In my administration,” Trump said in the summer of 2016, “I am going to enforce all laws related to the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”

In recent days, allies of Mr. Trump have accused the Justice Department of using double standards, saying they should have prosecuted Mrs. Clinton.

In fact, the cases are very different, with prosecutors accusing Mr. Trump of withholding documents from investigators after the subpoena. Prosecutors in Mrs. Clinton’s case said they did not have enough evidence to charge her, including under the Espionage Act. The report of a Justice Department inspector general looking at Mrs. Clinton’s case did not contradict that conclusion.

Since 2018, there have been about a dozen criminal prosecutions of people withholding classified or national defense information, according to the Justice Department.

In many of the cases, the suspects received lengthy prison terms, demonstrating how seriously the government takes protecting the country’s secrets.

Two former National Security Agency analysts – Harold Martin and Nghia Hoang Pho – were jailed for nine years and five and a half years respectively for taking classified information home. Mr. Martin, a Navy veteran, admitted that for nearly two decades he had cluttered his home office, car and garden shed with 50 terabytes of information, much of it stamped as “secret.” It was one of the largest thefts of classified documents in history, officials said.

In April, 48-year-old Jeremy Brown, a former Special Forces sergeant, was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison for holding classified information and other crimes. Mr Brown was briefly part of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, and was photographed in combat gear during the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In that case, Mr. Brown refused to accept responsibility for misconduct. During his sentencing, the judge said he had been “defiant to the end”.

Last year, Kendra Kingsbury, an FBI analyst, pleaded guilty to two counts of misappropriating national security documents at her home in Dodge City, Kan. Prosecutors said she kept 386 secret documents on hard drives and compact discs.

She will be sentenced next week, in a case that will be closely watched by the administration and Mr Trump’s legal team. David Raskin, one of the prosecutors who handled Ms. Kingsbury’s case, now works for Jack Smith, the special prosecutor leading the case against the former president.

Mr. Trump’s case marks the first time a former president has been charged with a federal criminal offense. But there have been previous cases of prosecutions where politicians or high-ranking government officials mishandled classified information.

All of these cases involved felony charges, not felony charges for violating the Espionage Act.

In the late 1990s, John M. Deutch, a former CIA director, was investigated by the Justice Department for mishandling classified information. He considered pleading guilty to felony charges, but was pardoned by President Bill Clinton on his last day in office.

In 2005, Sandy Berger, Mr. Clinton’s former national security adviser, was ordered by a judge to pay a $50,000 fine for illegally taking classified documents from the National Archives. Mr Berger pleaded guilty to a felony and said he made a genuine mistake as he prepared to testify before the 9/11 Commission.

A decade later, David H. Petraeus, another former CIA director, pleaded guilty to a charge of mishandling classified materials. He was placed on probation and fined $100,000.

Mr. Petraeus had kept eight personal notebooks of highly classified information, including identities of classified assets and war strategies, and shared the notebooks with Paula Broadwell, his mistress and biographer.

In his case, prosecutors discovered a recording of Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell talking about the notebooks.

‘I mean, some of them are top secret,’ Mr. Petraeus told her. He added, “It has things in codewords in it.”

Similarly, in the case of Mr. Trump, prosecutors have a potentially damning recording of the former president talking at his home in Bedminster, NJ, with a writer and publisher working on a book about Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff. .

“Secret. This is classified information,” Trump boasted as he showed his guests a document. “Look, look at this.”

The government claims that later on the recording, Mr. Trump says he did not release the document he showed them.

“But this is still a secret,” he says, making someone in the room laugh.

In the case involving Mr. Birchum, he spent more than 29 years as an enlisted aviator and officer in the Air Force. He completed several deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and earned the Bronze Star. In one case, Mr Birchum’s intelligence work supported “more than 40 attacks on foreign terror networks resulting in the capture or death of more than 800 enemy combatants,” according to a motion by his lawyer asking for a lighter sentence in his case early.

The sentencing memo said Mr Birchum showed “exceptionally poor compliance” with his obligation to protect the nation’s secrets, but he did not keep secret materials “for personal gain or with malicious intent to harm the country to take”.

In that motion — written a month before Mr. Trump’s indictment was unsealed — Mr. Roper, the attorney, acknowledged the unlikely similarities between an Air Force officer and his commander in chief.

“Among other things,” Mr. Roper told the court, “his client now shares a stage” with Mr. Trump.

Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter jailed in Russia on espionage charges, appealed earlier this week against a court decision that extended his detention by more than three months, The Journal confirmed Friday.

Gershkovich, 31, had already spent nearly two months in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, known for its harsh conditions, when a court on Tuesday extended his detention until August 30. the time it was “deeply disappointed” and would continue to demand his immediate release. The appeal was filed Thursday, according to The Journal.

The White House has said Mr Gershkovich is “unjustly detained”, effectively meaning the United States considers him a political prisoner. Russia has so far provided no evidence to support the espionage allegations, and the United States, The Journal and several press freedom groups have vehemently rejected them as false.

Mr Gershkovich’s parents, Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich, were admitted to the courthouse on Tuesday and were able to see their son for the first time since his March 29 arrest during a reporting tour in the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg. Mrs. Milman wore a badge with the phrase “Free Evan” – a rallying cry of the campaign for his release.

Iran on Monday ousted its top national security official, one of the country’s most powerful men, after coming under scrutiny for his close ties to a senior British spy.

The security official, Ali Shamkhani, had been secretary of the Supreme National Council, which shapes Iran’s security and foreign policy, for ten years and previously worked at the Defense Ministry. The spy, Alireza Akbari, a dual British citizen, was Mr. Shamkhani’s deputy in the ministry and then served as an advisor to him on the council.

In 2019, as suspicions arose over Mr Akbari, Mr Shamkhani lured him back to Iran from Britain where he had moved, leading to his arrest and execution in January.

Mr Shamkhani not only appeared to have survived but thrived after the scandal until his sudden impeachment on Monday. In March, he led Iran’s negotiations to restore ties with Saudi Arabia, brokered by China, and also acted as a diplomat traveling to neighboring Arab countries in the Persian Gulf to strengthen trade and political ties.

But on Monday, the Islamic Republic once again demonstrated that even its most loyal servants are not immune from being removed from power. In a decree, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mr. Shamkhani from his position and thanked him for his services. He replaced him with a senior Revolutionary Guard naval commander with little experience in civilian politics.

Last June, Iran also ousted the head of the Guards intelligence unit, Hossein Taeb, after a series of covert attacks and assassinations in Iran linked to Israel suggested that Iranian intelligence circles had been compromised.

Iranian analysts said a number of controversies contributed to Mr Shamkhani’s impeachment.

He was charged with corruption amid allegations that his family was raking in millions of dollars through an oil shipping company to help Iran evade sanctions. He was also blamed for the breakdown of talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

The council was also criticized for its handling of domestic unrest during the months-long uprising demanding the ouster of ruling clerics, with the majority of Iranians seeing Mr Shamkhani as complicit in the violent crackdown that left hundreds of protesters dead – and with government supporters criticizing his leadership as not being harsh enough.

Apart from that, the hardline that now controls parliament and the presidency saw him as too close to the previous administrations, which were centrist and reformist, and therefore did not trust him.

“There was pressure on Mr Khamenei from the hardline and public opinion to remove Mr Shamkhani,” Gheis Ghoreishi, a political analyst close to the government, said in a telephone interview from Iran. “He resisted for a while, but the lobbying got too loud.”

In announcing the resignation, Mr. Khamenei said that he was appointing Mr. Shamkhani as a member of the Expediency Council, which largely advises the Supreme Leader. The appointment is considered largely ceremonial; in recent years, other officials who had fallen out with Mr Khamenei, including former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have also been appointed to the council to save face.

Mr Shamkhani’s ability to weather the storm of the espionage scandal for so long may have been the result of an agreement between Mr Khamenei and Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, analysts said.

“There was a give and take deal between President Raisi’s government and the Supreme Leader to allow Mr. Shamkhani to redeem his public position after the Akbari scandal with the Saudi deal,” said a political analyst, Sasan Karimi , in an interview from Tehran.

In a separate decree on Monday, Mr Khamenei gave the Supreme National Council post to General Ali Akbar Ahmadian, 62, a former deputy commander in chief of the Guards naval unit and a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war. He was described by the Iranian media as a top military strategist who was also responsible for coordinating the Guard’s forces.

While Khamenei always has the final say on important state policies, from negotiations with the United States to the domestic uprising against the ruling clerics, the role of the national security adviser is influential, analysts say. General Ahmadian does not have much experience in foreign policy or national security issues.

“Shamkhani’s successor has no experience working with anyone outside the military,” said Ali Vaez, Iran’s director of the Crisis Group. “It’s a steep learning curve. There may be a reset or delay on key issues such as the future of the nuclear deal, detainee negotiations with the US and regional diplomacy.”

He is an old friend of the president, a close political ally for decades who is now the government’s top human rights official.

And he has been spied on repeatedly.

Alejandro Encinas, Mexico’s secretary of state for human rights, was targeted by Pegasus, the world’s most notorious spyware, while investigating abuses by the country’s military, according to four people who spoke to him about the hack and an independent forensic analysis that it confirmed.

Mexico has long been rocked by espionage scandals. But this is the first confirmed case of such a senior member of a government — let alone one so close to the president — being controlled by Pegasus in more than a decade of the country’s use of the spy tool.

The previously unreported attacks on Mr Encinas seriously undermine President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s pledge to end what he has called the “illegal” espionage of the past. They are also a clear sign of how free surveillance has become in Mexico, when no one, not even the president’s allies, seems to be off limits.

Pegasus only holds licenses to government agencies, and while there’s no definitive proof of who hacked Mr. Encinas’ phone, the military is the only entity in Mexico with access to the spyware, according to five people familiar with the contracts . In fact, the Mexican military has targeted more cell phones with the technology than any government agency in the world.

Mr. Encinas has long been at odds with the armed forces. He and his team have accused them of involvement in the mass disappearance of 43 students, one of the worst human rights violations in the country’s recent history.

His cell phone has been compromised several times — as recently as last year when he led a government truth commission into the kidnappings — giving the hackers unfettered access to his entire digital life, according to the four people who discussed it with him.

Pegasus was used against some of Mexico’s most prominent journalists and pro-democracy advocates several years ago, sparking an international scandal that tarnished the previous administration.

Yet the attacks on Mr. Encinas are unlike anything Mexico has ever seen.

“When someone as close to the president as Alejandro Encinas is targeted, it is clear that there is no democratic control over the agent of espionage,” said Eduardo Bohorquez, the director of the Mexican chapter of Transparency International, an anti-corruption group.

“There are no checks and balances,” he added. “The military is a superpower with no democratic oversight.”

Mr. Encinas did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Mexican president and the Mexican defense ministry also declined to respond to requests for comment.

Pegasus can infect your phone without any sign of intrusion and extract anything – any email, text, photo, calendar event. He can watch through your phone’s camera or listen through the microphone, even when your phone seems to be off.

People who spoke to Mr Encinas about the hacks said he learned the details of the infections after they were confirmed by Citizen Lab, a watchdog group based out of the University of Toronto. It performed a forensic analysis on his phone which has not been made public.

The group also found evidence that Pegasus had infiltrated the phones of two other government officials who work with Mr Encinas and have been involved in investigations into rights violations by the armed forces, three people with knowledge of the hacks said.

Citizen Lab declined to comment.

The Israeli manufacturer of Pegasus, NSO Group, opened an investigation into cyberattacks against human rights defenders in Mexico following recent reports from The New York Times about the military’s use of spyware, according to a person familiar with the NSO compliance investigations.

The company also began investigating the attacks on Mr Encinas and his two colleagues after The Times asked about those hacks, the person said.

In a statement, NSO said it does not manage individual Pegasus systems, but is “investigating all credible allegations of abuse.”

The hacking has put Mr. Encinas and the President in a difficult position. In early March, Mr Encinas met with Mr López Obrador to discuss the espionage and whether he should go public with it, according to several people briefed on the conversation.

But Mr. Encinas has since remained silent about his Pegasus infection, they said.

Over the summer, he and his team released an explosive report on the disappearance of the 43 students, accusing the military of playing a role, calling the events “a crime of the state.”

Then questions arose about the evidence and Mr Encinas came under intense scrutiny – especially after he admitted in an interview with The Times that key parts of the investigation were “invalid”.

Lawyers representing military officials involved in the case called for his resignation and charged him with falsifying evidence. Mr López Obrador has stood by Mr Encinas throughout, calling him “an exemplary public servant in whom we have all our confidence”.

The two men have been political partners for more than two decades; Mr. Encinas served in Mr. López Obrador’s cabinet when he became mayor of Mexico City in 2000.

“Andrés is my friend, he is my partner,” Mr Encinas was quoted as saying as said in 2011. “We are part of a team and a project.”

But since Mr. López Obrador took office, the two men have not always aligned with the growing power of the military.

The country’s armed forces have greatly expanded their authority under Mr. López Obrador, building broad control over the police, as well as a formidable array of other activities, including building much of a 1,000-mile railway line and an airport , distributing medicines and managing ports and customs .

Mr. Encinas has been one of the few people willing to criticize the military from within.

When soldiers killed five people in northern Mexico this year, Mr. Encinas publicly that the unarmed men had been “executed” by the military.

The president has not weakened his support for the armed forces. Despite mounting evidence that the military is abusing Pegasus, Mr. López Obrador deny that espionage is taking place.

“We don’t spy on anyone,” López Obrador said in March. He added: “It is an act of dishonesty and lack of principle to spy.”

When the Israeli Defense Ministry approves the sale of Pegasus to government agencies, they must sign agreements to use the surveillance tool exclusively for combating serious crime or terrorism, three Israeli defense officials said.

NSO is now investigating whether the use of Pegasus in Mexico was in violation of that agreement.

Faced with two lawsuits in the United States by Apple and Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company, NSO is under more pressure than ever to demonstrate that it is enforcing its own rules. The Biden administration also blacklisted the Israeli company in 2021, concerned about how Pegasus was being used to “maliciously attack” dissidents around the world.

NSO appealed the decision, but as part of the process, the company hopes to demonstrate that it prevents abuse.

A senior executive at NSO said the company had disconnected 10 customers after they breached the terms of their contracts. One of them, the Emir of Dubai, used Pegasus to spy on his ex-wife, according to public court documents.

If NSO confirms that Mr. Encinas and others were targeted by the Mexican military for no legitimate reason, the company could immediately shut down the institution’s access to Pegasus.

Publicly, Mr López Obrador’s position has not changed. After The Times revealed how the Mexican military became the world’s first — and most prolific — user of Pegasus, the president said the armed forces “respect human rights and no longer spy like before.”

Emiliano Rodriguez Mega contributed reporting from Mexico City.

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced arrests and criminal charges in five cases related to sanctions evasion and technological espionage efforts linked to Russia, China and Iran.

Two Russian nationals were taken into custody last week on charges of sending aircraft parts to Russia in violation of sanctions imposed following the invasion of Ukraine. In another case, a former Apple engineer is accused of stealing the company’s autonomous vehicle technology to supply it to a Chinese competitor.

The announcements were the work of a recently created “technology strike force”, which aims to protect critical US technology or data from being stolen by hostile nations. The clout was founded in February and brings together agents with the Departments of Commerce and Justice, as well as the FBI and local law firms.

Federal agents are working to trace the global movement of US goods and data, as well as the funds used to pay for it. The effort seeks to target the global networks that channel goods and technology through opaque jurisdictions and intermediaries to try to circumvent sanctions and technological restrictions imposed by the United States.

In another case revealed on Tuesday, a California-based engineer is accused of stealing the source code of advanced machines that can be used to make parts for military submarines and aircraft to sell to various Chinese companies.

Two other cases were announced, including charges against China-based agents accused of trying to send materials used in weapons of mass destruction to Iran, according to US officials, and charges related to the alleged supply of advanced technology to Russia which could be reused. by the Russian army.

Matthew G. Olsen, the assistant attorney general of the Department of Justice’s national security division, told reporters that the cases showed the U.S. government’s ability to “accelerate investigations and strengthen our collective resources to defend against these threats.” to defend”.

“Foreign states are working hard to acquire our most sensitive technologies,” said Matthew Axelrod, the deputy secretary for export enforcement in the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security. “We’re working even harder to stop them.”

Oleg Patsulya and Vasilii Besedin, the two Russian nationals arrested last week on suspicion of attempting to buy millions of dollars worth of banned parts for Russian airlines, were charged with conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act and conspiracy to commit international money laundering. commit money. If convicted, they could face up to 20 years in prison for each charge.

The Commerce Department on Tuesday issued a temporary refusal order against the men, barring them from transacting US products for 180 days.

The order also applies to a forwarding agent in the Maldives that the men had used to transport shipments of banned products to Russia, as well as to a Russian airline, Smartavia, which attempted to purchase these products.

Federal officials on Thursday seized luxury goods purchased with the proceeds of their plan, a US official said.

A Chinese court said on Monday it sentenced a 78-year-old US citizen to life in prison on unspecified espionage charges, the latest in a spate of espionage cases authorities have pursued amid growing distrust of foreign influence in the country.

That said the Intermediate People’s Court in the southeastern city of Suzhou in a brief summary rack that it found John Shing-Wan Leung guilty of espionage and sentenced him. It said Mr Leung was arrested by state security officials in April 2021, but did not provide details of the allegations or the circumstances of his detention or trial. The court also ordered that approximately $70,000 worth of his personal effects be seized.

Mr. Leung holds a US passport and is a permanent resident of Hong Kong, according to the statement posted on the court’s social media account.

The court in Suzhou did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokesman for the US embassy in Beijing said the embassy was aware of the reports on the case but declined to comment due to privacy concerns. US citizens arrested in China are required to sign a privacy statement allowing embassies and consulates to release information about their affairs to the public.

Trials in China on charges of espionage or other sensitive political issues are often shrouded in secrecy, with proceedings closed to the public and the news media. Courts are controlled by the ruling Communist Party.

China has recently stepped up action against what it sees as a growing threat from spies through a wave of raids, inspections and arrests targeting foreign-linked companies and individuals alike.

In March, Beijing locked up a Japanese businessman of a pharmaceutical company for espionage. Last year the authorities arrested a senior editor of a Chinese Communist Party newspaper while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat, accusing the editor of acting as an agent for Japan or the United States, his family says.

Chinese officials have raided the offices or questioned the staff of US consulting firms Mintz group And Bain & Company. Most recently, state media announced a crackdown on the consulting industry in the name of national security Capvision Partners, a consulting firm with offices in New York and Shanghai. In describing the crackdown, China’s state broadcaster CCTV accused Western countries of stealing intelligence in key industries, including defence, finance, energy and health, as part of a “strategy of containment and suppression against China”.

Last month, China approved revisions to a counterintelligence law that expanded the kind of activities that could put foreigners behind bars. Experts say the changes, which will take effect in July, could criminalize a range of mundane information-gathering tasks, such as the work of journalists and due diligence on companies. Foreign companies have already started review their operation in China and increase worker protection.

A Chinese court said on Monday it sentenced a 78-year-old US citizen to life in prison on unspecified espionage charges, the latest in a spate of espionage cases authorities have pursued amid growing distrust of foreign influence in the country.

That said the Intermediate People’s Court in the southeastern city of Suzhou in a brief summary rack that it found John Shing-Wan Leung guilty of espionage and sentenced him. It said Mr Leung was arrested by state security officials in April 2021, but did not provide details of the allegations or the circumstances of his detention or trial. The court also ordered that approximately $70,000 worth of his personal effects be seized.

Mr. Leung holds a US passport and is a permanent resident of Hong Kong, according to the statement posted on the court’s social media account.

The court in Suzhou did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokesman for the US embassy in Beijing said the embassy was aware of the reports on the case but declined to comment due to privacy concerns. US citizens arrested in China are required to sign a privacy statement allowing embassies and consulates to release information about their affairs to the public.

Trials in China on charges of espionage or other sensitive political issues are often shrouded in secrecy, with proceedings closed to the public and the news media. Courts are controlled by the ruling Communist Party.

China has recently stepped up action against what it sees as a growing threat from spies through a wave of raids, inspections and arrests targeting foreign-linked companies and individuals alike.

In March, Beijing locked up a Japanese businessman from a pharmaceutical company for espionage. Last year, authorities arrested a senior editor of a Chinese Communist Party newspaper while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat.

Chinese officials have raided the offices or questioned the staff of US consulting firms like the Mintz Group and Bain & Company. Most recently, the state media announced a crackdown on the consulting industry in the name of national security, singled out Capvision Partners, a consulting firm with offices in New York and Shanghai. In describing the crackdown, China’s state broadcaster CCTV accused Western countries of stealing intelligence in key industries, including defence, finance, energy and health, as part of a “strategy of containment and suppression against China”.

Last month, China approved revisions to a counterintelligence law that expanded the kind of activities that could put foreigners behind bars. Experts say the changes, which will take effect in July, could criminalize a range of mundane information-gathering tasks, such as the work of journalists and due diligence on companies. Foreign companies have already begun to rethink their operations in China and increase worker protections.