Is this likely to go anywhere? The press release says an arrest warrant was issued, but the person charged isn't in custody. I doubt china is going to send him over, nor is he going to be on a plane headed to the US anytime soon, so nothing's going to happen to him unless he decides to enter the US?
It's newsworthy that PRC is recruiting Chinese citizens in executive positions of American companies to pursue the intelligence interests of the CCP by disenfranchising Americans of their constitutional rights and in willful violation of American law.
Yeah. Some of these people need to be made an example of. China's been using their consumer market allure as an aegis behind which to advance their interests and project censorship abroad.
It's a common tactic to recruit (threaten?) people to disrupt anything the CCP doesn't like in Western countries. Even non-Chinese people can be duped (or paid) into helping.
Even local schools and colleges that agree to setting up Confucius Institutes on school grounds. Indoctrinating students into fight anything it deems to be "anti-China".
Is it "recruiting"? If so it starts at higher education, "good" students can apply for party membership, which is a prerequisite for lush and comfy gov jobs.
And any org that employs 3+ party members shall set up a party chamber, host party sessions and even appoint a sectary.
This executive very likely is a party member, but that doesn't necessarily make this act party related, more and more Chinese have come to defend the 1989 event(if they know it ofc), as China is now on a peak, what the party did back then is gaining legitimacy and praises.
I won't be surprised if he had done this out of his own volition, and probably most of the people in his position would have done the same.
The HK protests were overwhelmingly disapproved and regared as "abject-lowlife riots", in some way, it reflects the public sentiment toward that 1989 event.
He's probably not going to court or jail personally, but there having an executive with an arrest warrant for espionage-ish charges is meaningful.
Beyond zoom, this is another incident/escalation in an emerging field. Chinese norms for doing business are coming into conflict. Especially for things like comms, media and such... doing business the chinese way is becoming a standoff position vis a vis western norms.
Some wealthy Chinese like to send their children to the US or Europe for University; if he does, he certainly cannot visit them, without the risk of getting arrested.
The US has been doing such things in the past, for example against "cyber" criminals in Russian and other "bullet proof" jurisdictions. Once in a while, they catch somebody who is on vacation in a country that does extradite to the US. It's a long game.
