U.S. Moves to Strip Citizenship from CCP Agent Who Targeted Falun Gong

The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking to revoke the citizenship of Ping Li, a 61-year-old naturalized American who spied on Falun Gong practitioners and Chinese dissidents in the United States on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Announced on Oct. 5 as part of a sweeping denaturalization effort, the case appears to be the first in many years—if not the first ever—in which the U.S. government has sought to strip citizenship from a CCP agent for carrying out transnational repression on American soil.

According to the complaint, filed Oct. 1 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Li worked at the direction of officers of the CCP’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) from at least 2012. His task was to obtain information of interest to Beijing—including on Falun Gong practitioners, Chinese dissidents and pro-democracy advocates, and U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations—and report it back to the MSS.

“Mr. Li’s conduct is prima facie evidence that he was not attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States and was not well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States at the time of his naturalization,” the Justice Department stated.

Court filings from Li’s 2024 criminal case show that Falun Gong was among his targets from the start. One of his earliest assignments, in 2012, was to collect information on lawsuits that Falun Gong practitioners planned to bring against Chinese officials. In April 2013, at his handler’s request, he sent the social media handles of two Israeli authors who had written books about Falun Gong.

In September 2014, the MSS officer sent Li details on a Falun Gong practitioner from Hubei Province who had protested outside a Chinese consulate in California, including the man’s home address, phone number, and the make and model of his car. Li replied the same day with information on the person he believed the officer was seeking. He used anonymous online accounts to communicate with the MSS, traveled to China to meet his handlers, and typically answered their requests within days, often the same day.

Between 2015 and 2022, Li also gave the MSS sensitive information from his employers, a major U.S. telecommunications company and an international information technology company, including cybersecurity training plans and details of hacking incidents targeting U.S. companies. In August 2024, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an agent of the People’s Republic of China without notifying the U.S. Attorney General.

“This case sets a clear precedent,” said Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC). “Anyone in the United States who works for the CCP to target Falun Gong or other groups persecuted in China, even if all they do is gather intelligence, can be convicted, stripped of their citizenship, and deported.”

Li’s case is one of 40 denaturalization complaints the Justice Department filed between Aug. 21 and Oct. 2, the most in a single period under the Trump administration. Only two of the 40 defendants, Li and Jinchao Wei who were both born in China, are accused of working on behalf of a foreign government; none of the other 38 is described as a foreign agent or as engaging in transnational repression. Wei, a former U.S. Navy sailor, was convicted in 2025 of spying for China.

Earlier this year, on March 30, a federal judge revoked the citizenship of Li Chen and Yu Zhou, a Chinese-born couple who had pleaded guilty to stealing medical trade secrets and sharing them with China.