intelligence officers began tracking an employee of 
Department of Commerce in April when he was in Sichuan where he has family members, at one point interrogating him about his prior service in the US military.
The man, an American citizen, has been prevented from leaving China since mid-April, according to a State Department cable. The cable, from the US Embassy in Beijing, was dated May 2 and sent to officials in Washington, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House aides on the National Security Council.
On Apr 14, the Chinese officers seized the man’s passport, credit card, cellphone and iPad while he was in Chengdu. The officers, who worked for Ministry of State Security, returned the passport on Apr 22 but told the American he could not leave the country. His wife is in the US.
The cable gives a glimpse into the operations of the secretive MSS as it increased pressure on the American during his stay in China. It also lays out efforts by US diplomats to get him to Beijing from Chengdu in early May, while Chinese officers continued to conduct surveillance on him.
The man’s situation became public over the weekend, after American news organizations reported on his plight.
The Commerce employee eventually told US diplomats that the Chinese officers’ questioning “focused heavily” on his US military background rather than his work for the US Patent and Trademark Office, a unit in the Commerce Department. The man told the Chinese officers about an entry-level job he had held at a nuclear institute in China, his graduate studies in engineering at a university in Puerto Rico and his work maintaining Black Hawk helicopters while he was in the US Army.
His case became so contentious that a senior US diplomat and a diplomatic security officer went to Chengdu to meet with him. The diplomat observed “heavy surveillance” around the Commerce employee when the two met on May 1. The diplomat planned to accompany the man to a meeting the MSS had scheduled for him that day, but it was postponed.
The next day, the two embassy officials and the Commerce employee took an Air China flight to Beijing. The employee was under surveillance by Chinese officers the entire time. A man with no luggage sat in the row in front of the American and appeared to be watching him and the embassy officials.
After the group arrived in Beijing, the US diplomat saw people taking photographs of her and of the man while they sat at a restaurant next to the man’s temporary housing near the US Embassy.
“He is growing more deeply concerned about his overall situation, as well as the safety and security of his Chinese relatives based in Chengdu.”
nytimes.com/2025/07/21/us/
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Byron Wan
@Byron_Wan
a Chinese American man who works for the Commerce Department and traveled to China several months ago is being prevented from leaving the country after he failed to disclose on his visa application that he worked for the US government.
The American, an employee of the