China Convicts American of Spying for Taiwan

China announced Saturday that a Chinese-American resident of Los Angeles has been convicted of spying for Taiwan’s Nationalist government in an operation it said was directed by a University of California professor.

According to the New China News Agency, Roland Shensu Loo, 67, an American citizen, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for collecting “a large amount of intelligence” while he was in China in 1984 and 1985.

The official Chinese account did not give Loo’s address in Los Angeles, his job or any other information about him. The official account said that Loo had been working for Yang Peng, a California university professor whose American name it said is Edward Yang. China said that Yang was “under the direct leadership of the Taiwan military intelligence agency.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Peking said that embassy officials had been in contact with Loo. Beyond that, the spokesman declined to give any details about the case or Loo’s background.

Spy Arrests Frequent

Chinese authorities regularly arrest people on charges of spying for Taiwan. In the past 18 months alone, China has made public details of at least six separate espionage cases allegedly involving Taiwan intelligence operations.

It is much rarer, however, for China to assert that there has been some American connection to Taiwanese operations.

According to the New China News Agency account, Yang originally worked as a spy for an organization called the Sino-American Cooperation Organization. It said this group was run jointly by the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, and the United States before the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek fled from the mainland to Taiwan in 1949.

China charged that the Sino-American Cooperation Organization “maintained a concentration camp in Sichuan province . . . where 300 Communists and other patriots were massacred.” During World War II, Chongqing (Chungking) in Sichuan province was the capital of the Nationalist Chinese government under Chiang.

U.S. Training Alleged

According to the New China News Agency, Yang “received special training from U.S. spy organizations,” lived for a time in Tokyo and Hong Kong, and emigrated to the United States in 1980. While in his academic job in California, he was said to have spied under several aliases, including Yang Chongzhe, Yang Zongshan, and Ning Bide.

The case against Loo was brought by China’s Ministry of State Security, the agency responsible for counterintelligence work.

A ministry spokesman told the New China News Agency that Loo had collected intelligence from three Chinese nationals, all of whom were also sentenced to prison on espionage charges.

The three were identified as Yu Defu, 48, director of Peking’s Science and Education Film Studio; Yu’s wife Ning Nianci, 42, an engineer at the Peking Construction Engineering Institute, and a 43-year-old Hangzhou resident named Zhu Junyi.

The Chinese account did not provide any details of what sort of information these three were supposed to have provided to Loo or how the alleged spy ring operated. The account said only that Yu Defu had “covered Loo while he spied.”

Guilty Pleas Reported

In China, there is no general right to a public trial. The New China News Agency said the four alleged espionage agents had been “recently convicted” in the courts of Peking and Hangzhou. The press account asserted that the four “pleaded guilty when confronted with overwhelming evidence.”

Loo’s 12-year prison term was the harshest one handed out. Ning and Zhu were each sentenced to 10 years in jail, and Yu to three years.

The Chinese news account said the four were arrested “after careful surveillance” in Peking, Shanghai and three provinces in East China.

Last year, another Chinese-American, Larry Wu-tai Chin, a 63-year-old retired CIA analyst, was convicted in the United States of spying for China. Chin testified at his trial that he had passed documents to Peking over a 30-year period and had received more than $140,000 in payments for doing so. In February, Chin committed suicide in his jail cell.