Chinese men jailed in US military spying case

Two Chinese men who admitted trying to recruit US military service members to spy for Beijing were sentenced in California on Friday to 30 months in prison.

Liren Lai and Yuance Chen were also ordered to serve three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to acting on the orders of China's Ministry of State Security.

The US Department of Justice said the men carried out clandestine intelligence activities in the United States, including facilitating “dead drop” cash payments in exchange for information related to US national security. It said they also gathered information about US military personnel and installations and tried to recruit intelligence assets from within the US military.

The Justice Department said Lai, who arrived in the United States on a tourist visa, recruited Chen, a permanent resident, into the scheme. It said the men had worked since at least May 2021 for the Chinese government branch responsible for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence operations.

They were arrested in June 2025 and pleaded guilty over the following months to conspiracy and acting as agents of a foreign government without prior notification to the US attorney general.