‘Gravest national security concerns’: Chinese students charged in US with smuggling fungus

Washington: The US Justice Department has charged two Chinese researchers accused of trying to smuggle a fungus into America, bringing the case as the government pushes to keep more Chinese students out of the country.

The students, Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, were in a romantic relationship in July, when US authorities say Liu arrived in the US carrying small bags of the fungus Fusarium graminearum, which causes a disease that can cripple wheat, barley, corn and rice.

The disease, head blight, is a familiar problem for American farmers, particularly in northern and eastern states, according to research funded by the US Agriculture Department that tracked it in 32 states last year. The fungus can be particularly damaging to winter wheat crops.

Jian was arrested and booked in the federal courthouse in Detroit; Liu is believed to be in China.

The criminal charges come as tensions mount between the US and China over the Trump administration’s vow to “aggressively” revoke student visas for Chinese nationals. Such students, the administration says, could siphon off sensitive technology or trade secrets from American labs for the benefit of their home country.

Jerome F. Gorgon jnr, the interim US attorney in Detroit, said the researchers’ alleged actions amounted to “the gravest national security concerns”.

Fusarium graminearum causes head blight in wheat and other cereals.

He said they had tried to bring “a potential agro-terrorism weapon” into “the heartland of America”.

For decades, US national security officials have worried about – and sometimes arrested – Chinese academics suspected of stealing scientific data from American universities and businesses. The Trump administration’s new push goes further by stripping an unspecified number of students of visas.

Some experts say such a heavy-handed approach is likely to cause more harm than good to US scientific advances, by preventing or dissuading some of the roughly 277,000 Chinese students who arrive in the US each year to advance their studies.

The new case is distinct from most past national security cases related to Chinese students.

This image provided by a Michigan court shows toxic plant pathogens that a Chinese scientist allegedly entered the US with last year.Credit: AP

Jian and Liu are accused not of taking material out of the US, but of bringing it in. Charging papers specifically cite Jian’s written pledge of loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.

When a customs agent at Detroit Metropolitan Airport found the small bags last summer, Liu at first denied they were his but eventually admitted to smuggling them so that he could conduct research on the material at the University of Michigan laboratory where Jian worked, according to a criminal complaint filed against the pair.

“Liu stated that, while he was in the United States, he would have free access to the laboratory at the University of Michigan on some days, and that other days his girlfriend would give him access to the laboratory to conduct his research,” the complaint states.

The complaint also offers evidence of an earlier instance in which the pair may have smuggled material into the US.

Messages exchanged between Jian and Liu indicate Jian may have successfully hidden material in her shoe on a 2022 trip, the complaint said. Other messages cited in the complaint suggest that in early 2024, Jian arranged for another associate in China to mail a book with a plastic bag hidden inside.

The complaint said Jian’s cellphone also contained a work assessment form she had signed in January 2024 related to her research at a Chinese university.

The form consisted of a pledge to remain loyal to China and to “support the leadership of the Communist Party of China, resolutely implement the party’s educational guidelines and policies, love education, care for students, unite colleagues, love the motherland and care about international affairs”, according to the criminal complaint. Thousands of Chinese students studying abroad are required to sign such forms by the party-state.

Jian and Liu are charged with conspiracy, smuggling, false statements and visa fraud.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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