He was charged Wednesday with acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China in the United States from 2018 to 2023, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Mr. Tang performed “tasks under the direction of the Ministry of State Security of the People’s Republic of China, which is the country’s top civilian intelligence agency,” the ministry said.
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He is said to have provided officials at the ministry with information on “individuals and groups considered” by Beijing “as potentially unfavorable” to its interests, including “prominent democracy activists and Chinese dissidents based in the United States.”
Arrested on Wednesday, he was due to appear before a judge.
Mr Tang, from Jilin province in northeastern China, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for taking part in the 1989 democracy movement that culminated in the deadly Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing.
He was released after serving eight years in prison.
Mr. Tang continued to campaign for democracy in China and was repeatedly detained, interrogated and harassed by authorities before fleeing to Taiwan, according to a Taipei-based rights group that helped him apply for asylum in 2002.
