{"id":505827,"date":"2026-10-23T22:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T22:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/505827\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T22:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T22:24:08","slug":"alleged-chinese-agent-wanying-zhang-pleads-not-guilty-in-los-angeles-courtroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/505827\/","title":{"rendered":"Alleged Chinese agent Wanying Zhang pleads not guilty in Los Angeles courtroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Southern California realtor accused of being a Chinese foreign agent<\/a> pleaded not guilty to the allegations in a Los Angeles federal courtroom Friday.<\/p>\n

Wanying Zhang, 34, appeared in a white jumpsuit and shackles, speaking only to deny charges that she surveilled the Taiwanese president’s son<\/a> in a Seattle suburb in September 2025.<\/p>\n

The plea puts the case on track for a trial that will require<\/a> the Justice Department to lay out its evidence of the allegations she conspired with Chinese intelligence officials for what prosecutors called a spy mission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She was arrested<\/a> earlier this month at L.A. International Airport while attempting to board a flight to China. She has been charged<\/a> with one count of acting in the U.S. as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Zhang’s husband, Edric Ding, had appeared in earlier court hearings. The couple have been realtors together at the same firm in Irvine, California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Ding did not appear at the short hearing on Friday. This is after prosecutors claimed in a recent court filing that Zhang was having an affair with a man who accompanied her on the alleged surveillance mission to Washington state last year. CBS has identified him as Fatai Miao, a construction entrepreneur who recently left Southern California on a one-way ticket to China.<\/p>\n

Miao’s son told CBS News he does not believe his father was working for the Chinese government, and Miao has not been charged with any crime.<\/p>\n

The judge set a pretrial hearing for Nov. 12. The trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 30 at a federal courthouse in Santa Ana, California, and will last an estimated four days.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both prosecutors and Zhang’s attorney, Craig Harbaugh, declined to comment on Friday.<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n

\n Go deeper with The Free Press\n <\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Southern California realtor accused of being a Chinese foreign agent pleaded not guilty to the allegations in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7,3573,48,52,51,47,50,49,7853,36783,43437],"class_list":["post-505827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-california","tag-china","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-seattle","tag-spying","tag-taiwan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}