China says US national arrested on suspected espionage

China said Friday that a US citizen had been arrested on suspicion of espionage.

“Min Zin is suspected of spying and endangering China’s national security,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters in Beijing.

He has been "placed under criminal measures (and) China has informed the US consulate general in Guangzhou,” Lin said.

Confirmation of Min Zin’s arrest came after he “disappeared on June 3 while in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar,” according to The New York Times.

“All lawful rights of Min Zin are fully protected,” said Lin.

The New York Times, which broke the news of Min Zin’s arrest, reported that he is a graduate student at UC Berkeley and the founder of a Myanmar-based research group.

“Min Zin is a political scientist and executive director of a policy research group originally based in Yangon, the former capital of Myanmar. The group has worked from different locations since a 2021 military coup in Myanmar. Over the years, he has spent time in both the United States and his home country of Myanmar, once known as Burma, and he now lives in Thailand,” it said in the report.

Min Zin has written extensively on Myanmar politics.

The US State Department told the daily that it was aware of reports concerning a US citizen detained in China.

According to the report, US citizen Kai Li was convicted of espionage in China in 2016 but was among three Americans released by Beijing in 2024 in a prisoner exchange with Washington.

Another American convicted of espionage, Sandy Phan-Gillis, was expelled from the country in 2017 after having been detained for more than two years, the report added.

It also said about 200 American citizens were either “under some form of detention” or face “exit bans” in China, including people imprisoned on drug charges and others involved in commercial or financial disputes.