Image: Isai Ramos on Unsplash

US prosecutors have accused Chinese government agents of spying on dissidents living in the United States, including a political candidate, the Guardian reports.

The accused, a Chinese government agent named Qiming Lin, had requested an American private investigator to invent a political scandal to defame a congressional candidate. Based on court documents, the candidate is likely Xiong Yan, a nominee of the Democratic Party for a US House of Representatives in New York’s Long Island. Yan is a dissident involved in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. He fled China in 1992 and moved to the US.

In another case, Chinese government agents were accused of spying on employees of an unidentified human rights non-governmental organization based in Washington.