Chinese Researcher Pleads Guilty to Smuggling Dangerous Pathogen Into US

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A Chinese researcher has pleaded guilty to smuggling a dangerous fungus into the United States and lying about it.

Jian Yunqing, 33, made the guilty plea on Nov. 12 in Detroit, Michigan, five months after her arrest over allegations that she smuggled in Fusarium graminearum, a plant pathogen known to cause head blight in cereal crops such as wheat and barley, from China.

According to the Department of Agriculture, Fusarium head blight has been the worst plant disease seen since the stem rust epidemics of the 1950s, with close to $3 billion in losses to wheat and barley farmers between 1998 and 2000. Another outbreak in 2003 caused over $13 million in losses for wheat farmers in the Southeastern states including Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia.

Jian was sentenced to time served and will be quickly deported. She has served around five months in prison since her arrest in June.

Jian, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan, had received money from a state-funded Chinese foundation to conduct postdoctoral research on the fungus. Her boyfriend and co-defendent, Liu Zunyong, studied the same pathogen at Zhejiang University in China, where Jian obtained her doctorate degree.

Jian took a fellowship position at the University of Michigan’s Molecular Plant-Microbe Interaction Laboratory in 2023.

In her phone, FBI agents found a signed document dated 2024, where Jian pledged loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party and vowed to “resolutely implement the party’s educational guidelines and policies,” prosecutors said.

Investigators found messages on WeChat, a China-based social media app, that suggested Jian had smuggled biological materials into the United States, according to prosecutors. A translation of a conversation from 2022, cited in the court filing, showed Jian and Liu discussing where to put some unidentified seeds, with Jian saying she stuffed the seeds in her Martin boots in a “very small” ziplock bag.

Questioned by FBI agents in February, Jian repeatedly denied studying and physically possessing the pathogen, prosecutors said.

In a statement submitted to the court on Nov. 5, Jian apologized “the trouble I have caused to my employers, my colleagues, and to the court.”

“I did not follow the rules because I was under pressure to proceed with research and produce results,” she said. She added that the research didn’t mean any harm but that she was “wrong to do things this way.”

“It was a foolish thing for me to try to take the shortcut that has had such an effect on me and my colleagues,” she wrote.

A judge called it a “very strange” case involving an “incredibly accomplished researcher.”

In July 2024, Liu also attempted to hide the pathogen in the baggage on his flight to the United States, according to a criminal complaint.

When Customs and Border Protection officers questioned him about a wad of tissues found in his backpack, which contained a note in Chinese, Liu initially stated that he didn’t know what the materials were, prosecutors said.

These materials were various strains of Fusarium graminearum, which Liu later admitted were intended to be used for research at the Michigan lab, according to the court filings.

The lab doesn’t have a permit to study the pathogen.

CBP director of field operations Marty Raybon said the case “highlights the dangers posed by individuals attempting to smuggle potentially hazardous materials into the country, even under the guise of academic research.”

U.S. authorities brought charges against three other Chinese researchers in connection with her case in November.

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