China Power | Security | East Asia

China Spied on Taiwanese President’s Son – in the US

The incident shone a spotlight on China’s growing repertoire for transnational repression targeting Taiwanese leaders.

Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te

News broke earlier this month that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had arrested real estate agent Wanying “Heather” Zhang for spying on Lai Ting-yu, the eldest child of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te. Zhang lived in Irvine, California, where she worked as a real estate agent. She was originally from Changsha, China, before emigrating to the United States and naturalizing. 

Lai Ting-yu is not a political figure – members of the Lai family tend to keep a low profile. Lai Ching-te’s wife, First Lady Wu Mei-ju, does not often make public appearances with her husband. Arguably, the most famous members of the Lai family outside of Lai Ching-te himself are the family dogs, Murphy, Banban, and Luke, though Luke has since passed away. Banban in particular is best known as a dog that had lost a leg to a wild boar trap before being adopted by the Lai family.

Lai Ting-yu, who holds a doctorate in bioengineering from the University of Washington, works for electronics company Philips and lives in Seattle with his wife and son.

The FBI alleged that Lai was being surveilled by Zhang, along with other accomplices, in September 2025. It is unclear what Zhang was attempting to accomplish, given Lai Ting-yu’s lack of a political background. 

There could be a domestic political angle. Lai Ching-te has long been criticized by members of the pan-Blue camp over allegations that his son lives in the United States. The suggestion is that Lai is hypocritical in calling for Taiwan to increase defense spending to ward off Chinese threats, even as his own children live abroad. 

Alternatively, China may have sought to project its reach, or possibly to threaten Lai Ting-yu in order to have leverage over Taiwan’s president. Indeed, the idea that China might seek to kidnap the children of influential government officials in the course of an invasion, so as to blackmail political leaders during the turmoil of armed conflict, has occasionally been raised. This sort of political kidnapping is a plot thread that comes up in several episodes of “Zero Day Attack,” the hit 2025 television show dramatizing a Chinese invasion. 

Whatever the motive, according to the FBI, Zhang was working in coordination with Chinese handlers and demonstrated signs of tradecraft to cover her tracks, such as renting vehicles for several hours then returning them, or booking short-range flights with little notice. It is unclear how evidence of her activities was detected, but Zhang was arrested in October 2026 while attempting to board a flight to Shanghai. 

The FBI did not comment on when Zhang was recruited, or her motivations, seeing as she lived in a $6 million home and handled real estate transactions that were in the millions. Though there have been reports of China increasingly recruiting “disposable” agents that are used temporarily and then cast aside, tradecraft by Zhang may indicate professional training. 

The Taiwanese government has criticized such actions as Chinese transnational repression. This is not the first case occurring in the United States. Individuals allegedly working for China’s government were arrested for surveilling Taiwan’s then-President Tsai Ing-wen’s travels in California in 2023. Reports indicate that Taiwanese government officials such as Joseph Wu were surveilled during past trips to Europe. 

Most famously, news broke in June 2025 of an attempt by the Chinese military attaché in Prague to ram a vehicle into the motorcade of Taiwan’s then-vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim. Allegations of Chinese espionage against visiting Taiwanese government officials are fairly common; reports of China attempting direct kinetic action – what could be construed as either an attempt at........

© The Diplomat