A Chinese spy was caught running surveillance on the son of Taiwan's president inside the United States — yet another reminder that Beijing's intelligence networks are operating freely on American soil while the FBI has spent years treating domestic conservatives as the primary threat.
Wanying Zhang, a 34-year-old Irvine realtor who goes by "Heather," was arrested Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport as she tried to board a flight to Shanghai, the FBI said. She's charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent of the People's Republic of China.
The target: Lai Ting-yu, an engineer in his 30s who works for Philips in Seattle and is the son of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te. According to the criminal complaint, Zhang traveled to Seattle in September 2025 at the direction of Chinese government officials and sent them photos, video, and license plate information of the younger Lai and his family. Surveillance footage allegedly caught Zhang sitting in a car with an accomplice, photographing his residence and close relatives.
The New York Post obtained details from the FBI affidavit showing Zhang communicated with two suspected Chinese officials via WeChat as far back as September 2022 — meaning this operative was running for over three years before anyone in federal law enforcement caught on. During one exchange, Zhang told a handler she had spotted the Taiwanese president's son. "It's that young one," she said. When the official asked for an audio call, Zhang responded that she was busy recording video of him — at his residence, in real time.
The Guardian framed the story around diplomatic tensions between Beijing and Taipei, burying the operational details and the length of time Zhang operated unchecked. The Post gave readers the texts, the tradecraft, and the wider context: this arrest comes just months after the mayor of Arcadia, California, was caught running a secret Chinese propaganda and fake news operation on American soil.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli spelled out the stakes plainly: "We have a problem with Beijing using Chinese-Americans for their own purposes in California. They are using them for their own foreign affairs because they are playing the long game to get a competitive advantage over us."
Taiwan's presidential office called it a "typical case of transnational repression" and thanked the U.S. government. China's foreign ministry offered no comment.
Zhang, who worked at a real estate firm alongside her husband Edric Ding, used tradecraft to avoid detection and never registered with the attorney general as a foreign agent — the federal offense now holding her, according to the Post. It remains unclear whether she has retained a defense attorney.
So the question isn't just what Zhang did. It's how many others are doing the same thing right now — and why an FBI that mobilized to label school board parents as domestic terrorists took three years to catch one realtor texting Beijing from an iCloud account.
