Innocent professor or secret agent? Shujun Wang, the Chinese American academic who has been convicted of espionage in New York

During closing arguments, the lawyer showed the jury two photos. In one, James Bond in a smoking jacket, the spy par excellence; in another, Shujun Wang, arms raised and with a confused look on his face, far from one’s classic image of a secret agent. This last attempt to prove the innocence of the 75-year-old Chinese academic and pro-democracy activist didn’t work. On Tuesday in a Brooklyn federal court, six men and women found him guilty on all charges — of acting as a foreign agent without notifying the attorney general, providing the contact information of certain dissidents to Chinese intelligence agencies and lying to law enforcement about the plan — after just one day of deliberation. If he does not appeal the verdict, on January 9, a 25-year prison sentence awaits. Breon Peace, U.S. attorney general for the eastern district of New York, summed up the week-long trial in a statement: “The indictment could have been the plot of a spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real.”

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