Germany Sentences Chinese Spy Targeting Falun Gong

Dresden, Germany — According to several German news outlets, Germany’s Higher Regional Court of Dresden has sentenced Guo Jian — a German national of Chinese origin and former aide to AfD politician Maximilian Krah — to four years and nine months in prison for engaging in intelligence activities on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). AfD is Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany in English. 

The court found that Guo’s espionage notably included surveilling Chinese dissidents in Germany and gathering intelligence on the European Parliament’s deliberations and resolutions criticizing the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong.

”Most serious known Chinese espionage”

According to court findings, Guo first came to Germany from China as an international student and later became involved with Chinese intelligence services. Despite these covert affiliations, he was naturalized as a German citizen in 2011.

After obtaining citizenship, Guo joined the office of Maximilian Krah, then a member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the AfD party, becoming Krah’s longtime parliamentary assistant. 

Guo then made full use of the position obtaining access to internal EU documents and communications. The German Federal prosecutors concluded that, between 2019 and early 2024, Guo collected more than 500 documents for the Chinese intelligent service, including some that had been classified by the European Parliament as particularly sensitive. In the years 2023 and 2024, he also spied on Chinese opposition members and dissidents in Germany.

Guo was arrested in April 2024 following a yearslong investigation by German security authorities. The Higher Regional Court of Dresden convicted him of acting as an agent for a foreign intelligence service on Sept. 30. A federal prosecutor described the case as “the most serious known instance of Chinese espionage in Germany to date”.

Espionage targeting Falun Gong

Evidence presented in court demonstrated that in January 2024, Guo repeatedly passed on information about negotiations and decisions in the European Parliament to his Chinese secret service handler.

One key finding showed that Guo leaked internal European Parliament documents concerning the European Parliament’s January 2024 resolution (2024/2504(RSP)) that condemns the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong and calls on the EU and its member states to sanction the CCP´s perpetrators, with specific reference to the illegal imprisonment of Mr. Ding Yuande, a Chinese practitioner detained in Shandong Province Prison in China.

Notably, the court referred to a conversation between Guo and his commanding officer and concluded that “On January 11, 2024, he reported in detail on the intention to pass the resolution and the procedural rules to be followed.” In delivering the verdict, the court repeatedly referenced the aforementioned EU resolution as well as the case of Mr. Ding Yuande.

The German news outlets Welt and Bild highlighted the fate of family Ding, reporting that Mr. Ding Lebin, son of Mr. Ding Yuande and a Germany-based human rights advocate, has been “one of the victims of G. Jian” and held a protest on Sept. 30 in front of the court building of the Dresden Higher Regional Court calling on the international community to “Stop the persecution of Falun Gong”.

MEP Mrs. Miriam Lexmann, Member of Committee on International Trade and Delegation for relations with the People’s Republic of China in the European Parliament and Co-Chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), echoed Mr. Ding Lebin’s appeal with a statement on X: “As if it’s not enough that the CCP oppresses and terrorises people across China, they also continue to pursue them across the world, their tyrannical claws spreading to our countries.  We must not allow it, we must call for the release of all those oppressed, incl Mr Ding Yuande!“

Beijing’s global campaign

Since July 20, 1999, the Chinese Communist Party has carried out a relentless campaign to eradicate Falun Gong, characterized by mass arbitrary detention, torture, brainwashing, surveillance, and even state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting. From the very beginning, this persecution has extended beyond China’s borders, as the CCP sought to monitor, intimidate, and suppress Falun Gong practitioners overseas. In recent years, such transnational repression has intensified, employing increasingly sophisticated methods of surveillance, coercion, and influence operations to silence critics around the world.

Guo’s conviction underscores how the CCP’s overseas influence operations have penetrated European political institutions. Similar patterns have been observed globally. In 2005, Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese diplomat in Sydney, revealed that the CCP operated over 1,000 spies in Australia, with each Chinese Embassy and consulate maintaining a “Special Anti-Falun Gong Working Group.” These units, working under the United Front Work Department, systematically target Falun Gong and other dissident groups worldwide.

In 2024, the U.S. courts sentenced at least three CCP agents involved in transnational repression operations targeting Falun Gong practitioners and their companies in the United States. 

The international community and democratic governments must remain vigilant against such covert operations, which undermine national sovereignty, threaten civic freedoms, and violate fundamental human rights.