German Spy Gathered, Supplied Information to China Related to Falun Gong, Prosecutors Say

The defendant, Guo Jian, was accused of gathering information while working for German politician Maximilian Krah.

Journalists and visitors stand in the front of the courthouse of the higher regional court in Dresden ahead of the trial against two suspected spies for China, in Germany on Aug. 5, 2025. Jen Schlueter/AFP via Getty Images

In an espionage case involving a former Chinese assistant to a German lawmaker, prosecutors say the defendant gathered and supplied information to China related to Falun Gong, according to a recent court hearing in Dresden, Germany.

On Sept. 16, the German Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office requested a prison sentence of seven and a half years for Guo Jian and two years and nine months for his codefendant, a woman named Yaqi Xiao, during a hearing at Dresden’s Higher Regional Court.

Prosecutors alleged that both defendants had acted as agents for China’s intelligence service, with Guo serving as the chief conspirator.

Guo was a multipurpose agent who was always on duty and took pride in being an active spy for many years, according to prosecutors.

Fabian Schellhaas of the prosecutor’s office told the German edition of The Epoch Times that Guo, who renounced his Chinese citizenship and adopted German citizenship in 2011, was a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “who only took on the mantle of opposition activity in order to conduct investigations in opposition circles here.”

Guo’s defense attorney told the German edition of The Epoch Times that the sentence requested by prosecutors was excessive.

While there’s little information about the Chinese officer, prosecutors said that Guo had spoken of the person very respectfully, referring to the person to his wife as the “big brother.”

According to prosecutors, Guo and the Chinese officer discussed Falun Gong in at least one phone call that was intercepted by the German intelligence. The prosecutors said Guo spoke to the officer about a European Parliament motion for a resolution supporting Falun Gong. The prosecutors didn’t go into specific details about the call.

The resolution, adopted in January 2024, condemned the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong and called for an international investigation into the regime’s persecution campaign against the faith group. It also called for the release of a Falun Gong practitioner jailed in China, Ding Yuande, the father of a German resident. The Chinese authorities have imprisoned Ding since 2023 for practicing Falun Gong.

In the call, Guo went through the deliberations around the resolution, according to prosecutors. It’s unclear what the Chinese officer said in response.

Prosecutors said that Guo had stored hundreds of European Parliament documents, including some that had been classified as “sensitive,” intending to share them with the Chinese intelligence service. He had spied on Chinese dissidents in Germany for the Chinese officers, they said.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It gained widespread popularity in China during the 1990s, and according to official estimates, at least 70 million people took up the practice by the decade’s end. In 1999, the CCP perceived Falun Gong’s popularity as a threat to its rule and launched a nationwide campaign to eradicate it.

Since then, millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained, with hundreds of thousands tortured in custody and an unknown number killed—some falling victim to China’s state-sanctioned practice of forced organ harvesting, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

Scheme

Guo is accused of being an operative of China’s intelligence service since 2002, the German Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said in an April statement announcing the indictment against the two defendants.

From September 2019 until his arrest in April 2024, prosecutors alleged that Guo used his position as an assistant to a politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to “gather intelligence on debates and decisions of the European Parliament” for the Chinese intelligence and obtained more than 500 documents, including some classified by the European Parliament as “highly sensitive.”

Between 2023 and 2024, Guo also allegedly spied on Chinese dissidents in Germany, while pretending to be critical of the Chinese regime on social media, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Yaqi Xiao, a Chinese national, was employed by PortGround GmbH, a subsidiary of Mitteldeutsche Flughafen AG that offers services related to passenger, aircraft, and cargo operations at Leipzig/Halle and Dresden airports, according to prosecutors. She held the position of customer care manager before her arrest in September 2024.

Leipzig/Halle Airport is a key logistics hub for military cargo transport, serving the German Armed Forces, NATO forces, and defence contractors. The U.S. Air Force uses the airport for operations coordinated through Ramstein Air Base, a key U.S. installation in southwest Germany.

From August 2023 to February 2024, Xiao allegedly “assisted [Guo] by repeatedly providing him with flight, freight, and passenger information” at her workplace, and the information was subsequently turned over to the Chinese intelligence, according to prosecutors.

In particular, prosecutors alleged that Xiao provided Guo with information about the transport of weapons and armaments, as well as details about employees of the German armaments company Rheinmetall.

On multiple days—including Aug. 16, 2023, Sept. 8, 2023, Nov. 1, 2023, Nov. 4, 2023, Nov. 15, 2023, and Feb. 19, 2024—Xiao allegedly sent Guo photographs of aircraft and military vehicles located at the airport, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors stated that Guo initiated the espionage at the airport and took advantage of Xiao’s compliance, as she was afraid of what she was doing and sometimes refused to do what Guo demanded.

The two had a romantic relationship even though Guo was married, according to prosecutors.

In August, Guo and Xiao went on trial, and a court spokesperson identified the German lawmaker as Maximilian Krah, a former European lawmaker who now represents the AfD in Germany’s national parliament.

Erik Rusch, Eva Fu, and Reuters contributed to this report.