US charges Chinese students over military base trip

Five men allegedly conspired to cover up their “star-gazing” trip, the FBI has said

Five Chinese nationals have been charged with lying to the FBI and destroying evidence of possible wrongdoing, after they were caught near the largest National Guard training base in the US.

According to a criminal complaint filed in federal court on Tuesday, the five were discovered near Camp Grayling in northern Michigan in August 2023, and claimed to be journalists before leaving the area. 

“The defendants are not in custody. Should they come into contact with US authorities, they will be arrested and face these charges,” Gina Balaya, a spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office in Detroit, said Wednesday.

AP did not identify the men by name. They were said to be part of a joint program between the University of Michigan and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, having graduated earlier this year. 

According to the FBI affidavit, a sergeant major with the Utah National Guard confronted the group after midnight at a lake near the military base. One of them allegedly said “we are media,” before they picked up their belongings and agreed to leave the area. The FBI later discovered that the group had booked a room at a nearby motel a week before.

Four months after the incident, one of the men was interviewed by US Customs and Border Patrol at the Detroit airport, before traveling to South Korea and China. He claimed that the group had taken the trip, some 200 miles (320km) north of Ann Arbor, “to see shooting stars,” according to the affidavit.

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A search of his hard drive revealed “two images of military vehicles” taken on the same date as the group’s encounter at the lake.

The other four were interviewed in March, after arriving in Chicago on a plane from Iceland. They admitted to being near Camp Grayling in August 2023, saying it was to observe a meteor shower. 

Multiple National Guard units from across the US were conducting a large-scale exercise at the facility at that time. Among them were soldiers from Taiwan, the Japanese state broadcaster NHK revealed several weeks later. 

The People’s Republic of China considers Taiwan its sovereign territory and has pledged to peacefully reintegrate the self-governing island. Taiwan is  ruled by US-backed descendants of nationalists who fled after losing the Chinese civil war in 1949.

The FBI affidavit alleged that college students from China may have taken photos of “vital defense sites” in the US on multiple occasions, without providing details.

The US has not charged any of the students with spying on Camp Grayling. Instead, the complaint alleges that the five communicated on WeChat last December about deleting photos of the Michigan trip from their phones and cameras.