Communist China’s intimidation campaign against Taiwan has allegedly reached all the way to a quiet neighborhood near Seattle.
Federal prosecutors say a Southern California real estate agent staked out the home of Lai Ting-yu, the son of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, and fed video, photos and license plate numbers back to Chinese government officials, PJ Media reports.
The Justice Department says Wanying “Heather” Zhang, a 34-year-old realtor from Irvine, California, traveled to the Pacific Northwest in September 2025 and surveilled Lai’s family at the direction of Chinese officials. Neighboring security cameras allegedly captured Zhang and another person holding up phones in a way investigators say suggested they were recording Lai, his wife and their child.
According to the complaint, Zhang reported back: “Saw him, young male, it’s the young one.” When the official asked her to join an audio call, she replied, “I am video-recording.” She also allegedly sent the license plate numbers of two vehicles parked outside the home.
Investigators say the plot was hatched months earlier. Zhang allegedly traveled to China in June 2025, booked a private room in Changsha and met the government official who handed her the assignment. She later texted the official, “I can take care of this thing,” the complaint says. On Aug. 26, 2025, she wrote that she would “probably go to Seattle next week.” She even allegedly messaged the official as she boarded her flight, along with a photo of her boarding pass.
The FBI isn’t mincing words. “The complaint in this case lays bare a brazen plot directed by the Chinese government to conduct a covert surveillance mission on U.S. soil targeting close relatives of a Taiwanese government official,” said Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division. Zhang’s arrest, he said, “makes clear how far China’s authoritarian regime will go to advance its goals.”
Why would Beijing care where the Taiwanese president’s son lives? An FBI agent wrote in the affidavit that photographs and location information about close relatives could give China leverage over Taiwan’s president during a future conflict. In other words, a pressure file on a family, built on American soil.
It isn’t the first time. In February, a California political operative was sentenced to four years in federal prison after admitting he acted as an illegal Chinese agent, including sending Chinese officials real-time updates on then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen during her 2023 visit to Southern California.
Taiwan’s presidential office called the alleged operation “transnational repression.” Beijing said it was unfamiliar with the case and dismissed the espionage accusations as smears.
Zhang was arrested Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport before a planned flight to China. She faces one count of acting in the United States as an unregistered agent of a foreign government and could get up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
If the charges hold up, the message is chilling: Xi Jinping’s regime is willing to track down the families of its targets inside the United States. Washington should treat that as an attack on American sovereignty, not just a threat to Taiwan.
Source: pjmedia.com
