Passengers seen arriving in 2022 at Kunming Changshui International Airport, in China’s southwestern Yunnan province, where U.S. citizen Min Zin was said to be detained last week, according to people familiar with the arrest.
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CHIANG MAI, Thailand — China has arrested a U.S. citizen on suspicion of spying, the Chinese government said Friday.
Min Zin, who heads a think tank focused on his native country of Myanmar, was detained on arrival at Kunming airport in China’s southwest Yunnan province on June 3, according to sources including diplomats in the region who are familiar with the arrest. They spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, which they were not authorized to discuss.
The sources said Min Zin had gone to Kunming at the invitation of a Chinese academic institution.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said in a news conference Friday that Min Zin was detained on suspicion of engaging in “espionage and endangering Chinese national security.”
The U.S. State Department confirmed that it is “aware of reports regarding a U.S. citizen detained in China” but did not provide further details. “The Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of Americans. Whenever a U.S. citizen is detained, we work to provide the appropriate consular assistance,” it said in a statement to NPR.
The arrest comes a few weeks after the Beijing summit between President Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping aimed at easing tensions between the two competing powers. It also took place ahead of next week’s state visit to China by Myanmar’s president, Min Aung Hlaing.
Min Zin was a student activist in the 1988 democracy movement in Myanmar, then called Burma, eventually leaving for exile before returning to the country in 2013 during its brief period of political openness.
He is a founding member and executive director of the Institute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar (ISP-Myanmar), a nongovernmental think tank previously located in the former capital, Yangon. Since Myanmar’s 2021 coup, ISP-Myanmar has operated from various locations, producing analysis on conflict dynamics and governance. It has also focused on relations between Myanmar and China.
Min Zin is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, on Asia studies. His analysis has been featured in The New York Times, Foreign Policy and on NPR.
ISP-Myanmar declined a request to comment about the arrest, as did Min Zin’s wife.
China is one of a small number of countries to have endorsed Myanmar’s recent election conducted by the military junta that carried out the 2021 coup, a vote that most Western countries and human rights groups have dismissed as a sham.
Both China and Russia continue to arm Myanmar’s military as it wages war against its own people. China has also told ethnic communities along the countries’ shared border, with which it has influence, to stop arming resistance groups battling Myanmar’s military, crippling the resistance effort.
China’s influence in Myanmar has been a frequent topic in Min Zin’s writing. So has the civil war that continues to rage in Myanmar despite the election.
Jennifer Pak contributed reporting from Beijing; Michele Kelemen contributed from Washington.