China confirmed Friday that it has arrested Min Zin, a US citizen who leads one of the most prominent independent think tanks studying Myanmar, on suspicion of spying — a rare detention of an American on national security charges that comes weeks after the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing.
Min Zin was detained on arrival at Kunming airport in southwestern Yunnan province on June 3, according to diplomats in the region familiar with the case, after traveling at the invitation of a Chinese academic institution. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said he is suspected of 'espionage and endangering Chinese national security' and 'has been subjected to criminal compulsory measures,' adding that the US consulate in Guangzhou was notified.
The US State Department said it is 'aware of reports regarding a U.S. citizen detained in China' and is working to provide consular assistance. 'The Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of Americans,' it said.
Min Zin, who holds US citizenship and is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, is a founding member and executive director of the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar. A student activist in Myanmar's 1988 democracy movement, he has built ISP-Myanmar into a leading source of analysis on the country's conflict dynamics and governance since the 2021 military coup — including, frequently, the scope of China's influence over its neighbor.
The timing is pointed. The arrest precedes a state visit to Beijing next week by Myanmar's president, Min Aung Hlaing, who led the 2021 coup. China is one of the few governments to endorse the military's recent election, which most Western countries and human rights groups dismissed as a sham, and it has pressed ethnic armed groups along the border to stop supporting Myanmar's resistance.
Detentions of US citizens on espionage charges in China are unusual, with only a handful of known cases in recent years, and they have historically complicated diplomatic thaws. Neither ISP-Myanmar nor Min Zin's wife would comment on the case.
His writing has appeared in The New York Times and Foreign Policy, often examining the war that has continued to rage in Myanmar despite the junta's election — and the role of Chinese and Russian arms in sustaining it.