Charges alleging Chinese students worked as spies highlight US vulnerabilities to CCP espionage

One late summer night last year the National Guard discovered five Chinese students near a lake after midnight. The students claimed they were part of the “media” and promptly left the area. 

What the guardsmen who discovered them didn’t know then is that the Chinese nationals had planned the trip 200 miles from where they studied at the University of Michigan to take photos of military vehicles at Camp Grayling. 

The Justice Department charged the five students Wednesday over their alleged attempts to cover up their real reason for traveling so close to the military base. Warrants were issued for their arrest, though the individuals’ whereabouts are unknown, according to The Detroit News. 

Locals and legislators say the episode highlights the United States’ continued vulnerabilities to Chinese Communist Party espionage, adding fuel to the debate over China-connected entities building or owning land close to sensitive military sites and how the U.S. can protect itself from espionage by seemingly ordinary citizens. 

“This is the third significant case of Chinese nationals charged with espionage by the FBI in the State of Michigan in recent years,” former Ambassador and current Director of the Michigan-China Economic and Security Review Initiative Joseph Cella said in a statement posted to the group’s X account. 

“It shows the massive gaps in our national security and the urgent need for, on a whole of society and whole of government, including the states, to be on the proper footing commensurate to counter these espionage threats,” he continued. 

Cella’s group has long warned of national security threats in the vicinity of Camp Grayling where the China-linked company, Gotion, plans to build a electric vehicle battery plant. Their plans have spurred resistance from the local community and its dealings with the local Green Charter Township board are marred by accusations of bribery and conflicts of interest. 

Cella says the charges against these Chinese nationals related to apparent attempts to spy on Camp Grayling vindicates the widespread concerns about Gotion’s proposed plant, which security experts previously testified would almost certainly be used as a launch pad for espionage. 

The incident at guard camp also validates warning from security experts about the significant amount of Chinese-owned farmland and other entities all over the country in close proximity to U.S. military bases and sensitive sites.

The five graduates of the University of Michigan were charged Wednesday with several crimes related to their visit to Camp Grayling last year during one of the National Guard’s largest training exercises in the United States, called Northern Strike. 

The five, who were then still students, were discovered in the middle of the night with cameras near military vehicles and classified communications equipment during the exercise. A search of one student’s external hard drive turned up two images of U.S. military vehicles, the FBI said. The group had also conversed late last year on the Chinese messaging platform WeChat about deleting photos from their cameras and phones related to the incident. 

Zhekai Xu, Renxiang Guan, Haoming Zhu, Jingzhe Tao, Yi Liang were charged with several crimes including conspiracy, lying to federal investigators and destroying records during an investigation, The Detroit News reported. 

The Chinese nationals were undergraduate students at the university as part of an joint program with Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The students first arrived in the country in August 2022, when the two-year program began. They all graduated in 2024 and it is unclear if they returned to China. 

This is oddly not the first alleged spying incident involving University of Michigan students from China. In a similar case in 2020, two students were arrested in Key West, Florida after driving on to the Sigsbee Annex Naval Air Station and photographing the property, including military structures.

Cella said the recent developments in the Gotion case as well as Swedish defense company’s plans to open a facility near Camp Grayling make the charges of alleged spying more acute. 

Last week, new documents filed by the Green Charter Township in a lawsuit show that former board trustees failed to disclose conflicts of interest and apparent inducements to approve the controversial project, Just the News reported. 

The lawsuit was brought by Gotion, a U.S.-based company directly owned by its Chinese parent, against the township after a new board of trustees moved to reverse the plans after ousting the previous board in recall elections. The new board’s efforts, Gotion claims, violate a Development Agreement signed between it and the township last year.

Citing text messages and testimony uncovered and now part of the lawsuit, the township argues the development agreement with Gotion is void, in part, because of these conflicts of interest from former board members that were undisclosed when the agreement was supposedly approved. The court filings show that at least two former board members stood to receive financial benefits from Gotion while it was seeking approval for its project. Gotion has denied these claims. 

Former ambassador Cella in a statement said that “The spying charges against these Chinese nationals validates our concerns, particularly since the State of Michigan and others backing the Gotion ‘deal’ did not perform the strict scrutiny and due diligence our national security and intelligence agencies directed a bi-partisan group of state and local elected officials and business leaders to perform on such ‘deals’ nearly three years ago because of the national security threat PRC-based and CCP-tied companies present, particularly considering its proximity to Camp Grayling.” 

Last year, Bill Evanina, a 32-year veteran of the FBI, CIA, and National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party that Gotion’s plant would undoubtedly be a target for China’s use “non-traditional” collectors to gather intelligence in the United States.

“In your view, is it basically a guarantee that some of the people who come from China to work on this project will spy for the CCP?” Rep. Moolenaar, R-Mich., the Chairman of the committee, asked. 

“100 percent,” Evanina replied, explaining that China will often use seemingly ordinary businessmen, students, or engineers as “non-traditional collectors” to spy in the United States. 

It is not a stretch to think this pattern would not apply broadly beyond Michigan and the Gotion battery plant. In fact, the New York Post reported in June that Chinese entities have bought up swaths of land in close proximity to at least 19 U.S. military bases, including some of the most strategically important. 

“It is concerning due to the proximity to strategic locations,” Robert S. Spalding III, a retired United States Air Force brigadier general told the Post at the time. “These locations can be used to set up intelligence collection sites and the owners can be influential in local politics as we have seen in the past.” 

Last year after the Key West incident, The Wall Street Journal reported U.S. officials have tracked approximately 100 incidents of Chinese posing as tourists and accessing sensitive U.S. sites including a missile range in New Mexico and a rocket launch site in Florida. According to the Journal, U.S. officials described these incidents as a form of espionage. 

The U.S. Treasury Department this summer proposed new rules for a special government committee tasked with reviewing foreign investment in the United States—called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS. This new rule would extend that committee’s authority over Chinese land purchases, but past deals, like Gotion, would not normally be revisited. 

The Justice Department declined comment after an inquiry from Just the News about the incident. Regarding the agency’s effort to combat Chinese espionage at sites like the Gotion plant or at U.S. universities, the agency sent a link to remarks by the head of the DOJ Security Division outlining a strategy to combat foreign threats from China and other malign actors. 

After assuming control, the Biden Administration reversed a Trump-era program called the China Initiative at the Justice Department, which was designed to investigate and prevent China’s malign espionage activities in the U.S over concerns of appearing like China and Chinese people were be specially targeted. However, the department insisted that while the program was going away, it would not halt its fight against national security threats from China. 

On Thursday, Michigan Senate Republicans called on the state legislature to stop the Gotion project in light of the charges against the Chinese students. 

“Camp Grayling is 88 miles from the proposed battery plant being built by Gotion, a company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. With more and more evidence of Gotion’s relationship with the CCP coming to light, and this most recent counterintelligence probe with the five Chinese nationals, the time is now to pause the state’s subsidizing of the Gotion project,” State Senate Republican Leader Aric Nesbitt said in a statement.

The state legislator’s concerns were echoed by Rep. Moolenaar.

“This case shows once again that CCP espionage can happen anywhere in America and we must be vigilant. The CCP obviously has an interest in Camp Grayling and this is further evidence it would be a mistake for Michigan leaders to allow Gotion to build in our state. State funding for Gotion’s plan to bring Chinese nationals to Mecosta County is an open invitation for further spying on Camp Grayling,” said Moolenaar. “For national security reasons, Governor Whitmer and the legislature must revoke state funding for Gotion immediately.”