Two soldiers stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., and a former soldier in Oregon have been accused of sharing classified military information with China, according to federal officials. (Matthew Lucibello/U.S. Army)
WASHINGTON — Two Army soldiers stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington and a former soldier in Oregon have been accused in separate indictments of sharing classified military information with China, according to the Justice Department.
First Lt. Li Tian, a health services administrator serving in Washington, is accused of conspiring with Ruoyu Duan, a former soldier based in Oregon, to gather information secretly about the Army’s operations, including technical manuals, from November 2021 to December 2024.
Tian was tasked with obtaining instructions and manuals for Bradley and Stryker armored vehicles used by the Army and selling them to Duan, who was paid by unknown people in China, according to the Justice Department.
Duan served in the Army from 2013 to 2017 and routinely made payments to other security clearance holders and active-duty service members, according to the indictment, though only two soldiers were named in indictments released this week.
A second indictment accuses Sgt. Jian Zhao, a battery supply sergeant assigned to the 17th Field Artillery Brigade in Washington, of obtaining and selling about 20 government hard drives, some marked “SECRET” and “TOP SECRET,” to buyers in China.
Zhao received at least $15,000 in payments from August to December 2024.
“These arrests underscore the persistent and increasing foreign intelligence threat facing our Army and nation,” Brig. Gen. Rhett Cox, the commanding general of Army Counterintelligence Command, said in a statement on Thursday.
Tian and Duan are charged in Oregon with conspiring to commit bribery and theft of government property. Zhao is charged in Washington with bribery, theft of government property and conspiring to obtain and transmit national defense information to an individual not authorized to receive it.
In messages with a contact in China, Zhao sought buyers for sensitive information on military exercises between the U.S. and another country, an Army exercise in the Indo-Pacific region, the operation of strategic rockets and missiles, and the HIMARS multiple-rocket launcher, according to court documents.
Zhao set a starting price of $3,000 to $4,000 for “anything that touches HIMARS,” a weapon system that Ukraine has deployed in its war with Russia. He haggled over the price of a HIMARS-related document, calling it “very sensitive” and “super difficult to get.”
Zhao ultimately settled on a price of $6,500 for two documents, according to court documents. Zhao also offered to send an encryption-capable military computer to his Chinese contact in exchange for $1,800.
The Justice Department said the documents that Zhao sent contained sensitive information related to U.S. military readiness in the event of an armed conflict with China.
The defendants are the latest soldiers from Lewis-McChord to be accused of working with China. Joseph Schmidt, a former Army intelligence sergeant at the base, was charged in 2023 of trying to sell military secrets to China. He was later deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.
In another incident in California in 2023, two Navy officers were accused of providing details on wartime exercises, naval operations and technical ship data to Chinese intelligence agents.
“While bribery and corruption have thrived under China’s Communist Party, this behavior cannot be tolerated with our service members who are entrusted with sensitive military information, including national defense information,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement Thursday.
