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       Asian American Officials Cite Unfair Scrutiny and Lost Jobs in China Spy Tensions

       National security employees with ties to Asia say U.S. counterintelligence officers wrongly regard them as potential spies and ban them from jobs.

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       “I know dozens of diplomats who have lost out on getting assignments to China, Hong Kong and Vietnam,” said Yuki Kondo-Shah, a diplomat in London who successfully fought an assignment restriction placed on her for Japan. Credit...Mary Turner for The New York Times

       By Edward Wong and Amy Qin

       Edward Wong reports on diplomacy and national security from Washington. Amy Qin covers Asian American issues from Washington. They previously reported from China for about two decades in total.

       Dec. 31, 2023

       When Thomas Wong set foot in the United States Embassy in Beijing this summer for a new diplomatic posting, it was vindication after years of battling the State Department over a perceived intelligence threat — himself.

       Diplomatic Security officers had informed him when he joined the foreign service more than a decade ago that they were banning him from working in China. In a letter, he said, they wrongly cited the vague potential for undue “foreign preference” and suggested he could be vulnerable to “foreign influence.”

       Mr. Wong had become a U.S. diplomat thinking that China was where he could have the greatest impact. He had grown up in a Chinese-speaking household and studied in the country. And as a graduate of West Point who had done an Army tour in the Balkans, he thought he had experience that could prove valuable in navigating relations with the United States’ greatest military and economic rival.

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       Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent who has reported for The Times for more than 24 years from New York, Baghdad, Beijing and Washington. He was on a team of Pulitzer Prize finalists for Iraq War coverage. More about Edward Wong

       Amy Qin writes about Asian American communities for The Times. More about Amy Qin

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