US trial begins on China’s forced repatriation

— An American sleuth and two Chinese men faced jurors Wednesday in the first trial to come out of U.S. claims that China’s government has tried to harass, intimidate and arm-twist dissidents and others abroad into returning home.

Michael McMahon, Zheng Congying and Zhu Yong are charged with being part of a conspiracy to hound a former Chinese city official, his wife and their adult daughter to get him to go back to his homeland, where the government alleges he took bribes.

“If you are willing to go back to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be all right,” read a translated note that Zheng helped tape to their New Jersey door in 2018, though his lawyer said Zheng quickly had second thoughts and took the note down.

Prosecutors say it was one in a series of pressure tactics that included flying in the man’s then-octogenerian father to warn him that relatives would suffer if he didn’t come home.

“The victim and his family endured years of harassment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Irisa Chen said in an opening statement. “It’s part of a public Chinese government initiative to force people living abroad to return to China against their will.”

The defendants, charged with acting as illegal agents for China, all say they weren’t aware they were doing Beijing’s bidding in what’s known as “Operation Fox Hunt.” Their lawyers said the men believed they were helping to collect a private debt.

The trial comes as grievances mount between Beijing and Washington. This year, a Chinese spy balloon flew over the U.S., U.S. law enforcement authorities accused China of setting up a secret police station in New York, and — just this Tuesday — the U.S. military complained that a Chinese fighter jet made an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” near an American reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea.

China told the U.S. to stop such surveillance flights, maintains that the spy balloon was a civilian aircraft that went off-course and says the supposed secret police outposts just provide such services as driver’s license renewals.