LOS ANGELES — The FBI arrested a California real estate agent on Sunday for acting as an unregistered agent of China, accusing her of spying on Taiwan president’s family in the United States.The alleged foreign agent, Wanying Zhang, a 34-year-old resident of Irvine, California, was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport before she could board a flight to Shanghai, federal officials said.The case comes at a fraught moment for US-China relations, with Taiwan persistently at the center of their military and diplomatic rivalry. Beijing claims the island as part of its own territory.The FBI and federal prosecutors allege Zhang surveilled the house of the president’s son and sent photos, videos and license plate information for his vehicles to a Chinese government official.The federal criminal complaint does not name the alleged target, but the FBI’s rapid response account on the social media platform X said it was the president’s son. Ting-Yu Lai, the president’s elder son, lives and works in the Seattle area as an engineer.Zhang, who also went by the name Heather, is a naturalized US citizen, said Shawn Lewis, a spokesperson for the US attorney’s office.Zhang appeared in downtown Los Angeles federal court on Monday for an initial hearing to confirm she understood her rights. She has not yet been formally indicted.Judge Steve Kim told her she was not financially eligible for a public defender and would need to hire a private attorney as soon as possible. A hearing to determine bail or whether she would be detained was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.Her husband, Edric Ding, was at the courthouse but declined to comment.California records show Zhang has been a licensed real estate agent since 2016. A Zillow page shows she has sold seven homes in the last year around Orange County.The case is the latest in a series of Justice Department prosecutions aimed at rooting out alleged covert agents advancing Beijing’s interests on American soil.Many of the cases have centered on what the Justice Department says is China’s aggressive effort to locate and harass pro-democracy activists living in the US and suppress their speech. The Justice Department also says Beijing is determined to sway American public opinion in its favor by cultivating relationships with political figures seen as having access to the levers of power.Taiwan’s Presidential Office confirmed President Lai Ching-te’s relatives were the targets, without specifying if it was the president’s son, saying that “this is a classic case of transnational repression.”“Taiwan condemns in the strongest terms such barbaric acts — which disregard human rights and national sovereignty and aim to suppress, threaten, or even harm individuals advocating for freedom and democracy or their families — as such behavior should not be tolerated in the civilized world,” spokesperson Karen Kuo said in a statement.
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