Chinese Officers Questioned U.S. Government Employee About His Army Service

Chinese intelligence officers began tracking an employee of the U.S. Commerce Department this spring, when he was in southwest China and where he has family members, at one point interrogating him about his prior service in the U.S. military, according to a U.S. government document.

The man, who is an American citizen, has been prevented from leaving China since mid-April, according to the document, a State Department cable that was obtained by The New York Times.

The cable, from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, was dated May 2 and sent to officials in Washington, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House aides on the National Security Council.

On April 14, the Chinese officers seized the man’s passport, credit card, cellphone and iPad while he was in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, the cable said. The officers, who worked for the Ministry of State Security, China’s main intelligence and counterintelligence agency, returned the passport on April 22 but told the American he could not leave the country. His wife is in the United States.

The cable gives a glimpse into the operations of the secretive Ministry of State Security as it increased pressure on the American during his stay in China. It also lays out efforts by U.S. diplomats to get him to Beijing from Chengdu in early May, while Chinese officers continued to conduct surveillance on him.

The man’s situation became public over the weekend, after American news organizations reported on his plight. The cable obtained by The Times did not identify the man by name or give details about his background, but it offers new information about his situation.

China’s restrictions on the American come at a precarious moment, as President Trump tries to carry out a trade war against the superpower rival while also courting Xi Jinping, the country’s leader, whom the American president has spoken of in flattering terms. Mr. Rubio said during a trip to Malaysia this month that “the odds are high” that Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi would meet this year.

The Commerce Department employee is one of perhaps dozens of American citizens barred by China from leaving the country, in a shadowy practice called an “exit ban” that the Chinese government has used for years. The targets are often but not always ethnic Chinese, and many are former citizens of China. Some have been involved in business disputes in the country.

In recent years, Chinese intelligence and security officials have been given greater power to scrutinize and detain foreign citizens and their Chinese associates in hunts for so-called subversive elements.

Another U.S. citizen, Mao Chenyue, who is a Wells Fargo banker, has also been barred from leaving China.

The State Department cites the exit ban practice in its Level 2 travel advisory for China that urges visitors to “exercise increase caution.” In November, the department lowered its advisory from Level 3, “reconsider travel.”

The Commerce employee eventually told U.S. diplomats that the Chinese officers’ questioning “focused heavily” on his U.S. military background rather than his work for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a unit in the Commerce Department, the cable said. The man told the Chinese officers about an entry-level job he had held at a nuclear institute in China, his graduate studies in engineering at a university in Puerto Rico and his work maintaining Black Hawk helicopters while he was in the U.S. Army.

His case became so contentious that a senior U.S. diplomat and a diplomatic security officer went to Chengdu to meet with him. The diplomat observed “heavy surveillance” around the Commerce employee when the two met on May 1, the cable said. The diplomat planned to accompany the man to a meeting the Ministry of State Security had scheduled for him that day, but it was postponed.

The next day, the two embassy officials and the Commerce employee took an Air China flight to Beijing, the cable said. The employee was under surveillance by Chinese officers the entire time. A man with no luggage sat in the row in front of the American and appeared to be watching him and the embassy officials, the cable said.

After the group arrived in Beijing, the U.S. diplomat saw people taking photographs of her and of the man while they sat at a restaurant next to the man’s temporary housing near the U.S. Embassy, the cable said.

“He is growing more deeply concerned about his overall situation, as well as the safety and security of his Chinese relatives based in Chengdu,” the cable said.

The White House National Security Council referred a request for comment to the State Department. The department had no comment on the details of the case on Monday morning. “Our highest priority is the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas,” it said in a statement on Sunday night.

When a reporter in Beijing asked about the case on Monday, Guo Jiakun, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said: “I don’t have information to provide. China is a country under rule of law and handles the entry and exit affairs in accordance with the law.”