Tang, who is wanted by the FBI, is believed to have sought refuge inside the Chinese consulate in San Francisco.

According to a sealed federal criminal complaint filed June 26 in the Eastern District of California, attached bellow, Tang applied for a non-immigrant visa on Oct. 28 and was issued a J-1 visa on Nov. 5 to conduct research at UC Davis. Tang entered the United States on Dec. 27, the complaint states.

On her visa application, Tang answered no to the question, “Have you served in the military?” She also said she was not affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party. U.S. prosecutors allege that those were false statements.

According to the complaint, an internet search conducted by the FBI revealed an April 2019 article about a health care forum hosted in Xi’an, China, where Tang had been invited to speak. The article included a headshot of Tang wearing a military uniform that bore the insignia of the Civilian Cadres of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Two other articles from 2019 list Tang’s employer as the PLA’s Air Force Medical University (AFMU), formerly known as the Fourth Military Medical University (FMMU).

On June 20, the FBI interviewed Tang at her Cranbrook Court apartment in Davis. “When questioned about military service, Tang denied serving in the Chinese military and adamantly denied being a member of the civilian cadre,” the FBI states. According to the complaint, Tang said that she, like others at the military university, wore the uniform as was required and was unaware of the insignia’s meaning.

After interviewing Tang, FBI agents served a search warrant at her residence and seized her Chinese passport and electronic media. Five days later, during a review of the electronic media, agents found a 2016 photo of Tang wearing a different PLA uniform bearing the same insignia. Agents also found an application for government benefits in which Tang said she was a CCP member.

The FBI concluded in the complaint that Tang violated 18 U.S. Code § 1546(a) by knowingly omitting information about her military affiliations in her visa application. “It appears that Tang is part of a civilian cadre whose members are considered active-duty military personnel,” the complaint states.

According to a campus spokesperson, Tang came to UC Davis through an exchange program with Xijing Hospital, which has been affiliated with the Air Force Medical University since 1954 and is one of China’s top teaching hospitals.

“Juan Tang was a visiting researcher in the Department of Radiation Oncology, funded by the Chinese Scholarship Council, a study-based exchange program affiliated with China’s Ministry of Education and Xijing Hospital in China,” UC Davis Director of Media Relations Melissa Lutz Blouin said in an email to The Enterprise. “Her work was solely based in the research laboratory and she left the university at the end of June.”

“The UC Davis School of Medicine is providing all information requested by the authorities as they investigate this case,” Blouin said.

The FBI believes that at some point after she was questioned at her apartment in Davis, Tang fled to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco. That assessment was revealed in court documents filed July 20 in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, which are part of the case of Chen Song, a visiting Chinese researcher at Stanford who is also charged with visa fraud for lying about affiliations with the Chinese military.

U.S. attorneys David L. Anderson and Benjamin Kingsley included details about Tang in a court memo on Song’s case to illustrate a pattern of espionage by Chinese researchers at U.S. universities. Also included in the memo is Xin Wang, a visiting researcher at UC San Francisco who was arrested on June 7 for visa fraud and who reportedly told authorities he was instructed by a supervisor in China to document the layout of a UCSF lab and replicate it upon his return to China.

“Defendant’s case is not an isolated one, but instead appears to be part of a program conducted by the PLA — and specifically, FMMU or associated institutions — to send military scientists to the United States on false pretenses with false covers or false statements about their true employment,” the memo states.

John Brown, who leads the FBI’s National Security Branch, said the agency has identified visa holders in at least 25 American cities with hidden ties to the Chinese military, The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

The charges against Tang and other Chinese researchers in California come amid rising tensions between the U.S. and China. On Wednesday, U.S. officials ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, accusing diplomats of economic espionage and trying to steal scientific research. The Chinese government called the accusations “groundless fabrications” and warned it would retaliate.