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Petty Officer Wenheng "Thomas" Zhao, 26, pleaded guilty last
October to conspiracy and receiving a bribe. Zhao, who had faced
a maximum of 20 years in prison, was also fined $5,500, the U.S.
justice department said in a statement.
Zhao, who worked at Naval Base Ventura County in California,
admitted sending his Chinese handler plans for U.S. military
exercises in the Indo-Pacific region, operational orders, and
electrical diagrams and blueprints for a radar system on a U.S.
military base in Okinawa, Japan.
"Zhao chose to betray the oath he took to our country and put
others at risk," said Larissa Knapp, executive assistant
director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National
Security Branch.
"Today's sentencing demonstrates, yet again, the inability of
China's intelligence services to prevent the FBI and our vital
partners from apprehending and prosecuting the spies China
recruits," she said in a statement.
The United States has accused China of an extensive campaign of
espionage and cyberattacks, a charge that Beijing rejects.
On Tuesday, the Chinese foreign ministry said it was unaware of
the details.
"I'm not aware of the specifics, but I would note that
high-level U.S. intelligence officials said they made progress
in rebuilding their spy network in China," said Mao Ning, a
foreign ministry spokesperson, at a regular news conference.
"America on the one hand repeatedly disseminates false
information about so-called Chinese spies, and yet on the other
hand openly declares it wants to launch large-scale espionage
activities against China. This is a double standard."
In recent years, bilateral relations have grown tense over a
range of issues including national security, trade curbs,
COVID-19 and Taiwan.
But a summit in San Francisco in November between Chinese
President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden was widely
seen to have helped cool tensions.
"China-U.S. relations saw extreme difficulty at the beginning of
2023," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Tuesday at a
symposium in Beijing.
"After arduous efforts, both sides restructured communication
and dialogue, and bilateral relations were able to stop
worsening and to stabilise."
(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Additional reporting by Andrew
Hayley in Beijing; Editing by Caitlin Webber, Bill Berkrot and
Barbara Lewis)
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