The Weird, Twisting Tale of How China Spied on Alysa Liu and Her Dad

On November 16, 2021, Matthew Ziburis sat in his car in a residential neighborhood in the Bay Area stalking an “enemy,” as he put it. A veteran of both the US Army and Marine Corps, Ziburis had previously served in Iraq. But on this mission, he was working at the behest of China’s government. The targets that autumn day were American citizens: Arthur Liu and his teenage daughter, Alysa.

Arthur’s personal story was an exemplar of the American Dream. As a university student, he took part in the 1989 pro-democracy movement in China. After the crackdown at Tiananmen Square that year, he fled to the United States, settling in California. Arthur poured a small fortune and an equal amount of energy into molding Alysa into a figure skating phenom. As a national champion at age 13, she bantered along with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, and was at the time on track to represent America at the Winter Olympics the following year in Beijing.

Ziburis was surveilling the Liu home when he called Arthur, falsely claiming that he was a member of the US Olympic Committee who needed to discuss upcoming travel to Beijing, Arthur says. Ziburis was adamant that Arthur fax him copies of his and his daughter’s passports as part of a travel “preparedness check,” Liu tells WIRED. This struck Arthur as odd. In his many years dealing with sports bodies, he had never fielded such a request. Alysa’s agent did not respond to a request for comment.

Ziburis’ surveillance of Arthur and Alysa Liu that November day five years ago was just one episode in a bizarre saga that spanned from California to Beijing, touched New York City mayors and members of the US Congress, and has seen two people plead guilty and two more awaiting trial.

Unbeknownst to Ziburis, as he sat outside Aurthur and Alysa’s Northern California home, he too was being watched.

Ziburis had allegedly been dispatched to Northern California by Frank Liu, a self-styled fixer in the Chinese community from Long Island, New York, who was in turn receiving orders from a person in China named Qiang Sun. According to US authorities, Sun was working at the behest of the Chinese government. A concerned private investigator who once worked for Frank Liu had alerted the FBI to Frank’s escapades and was assisting authorities. Law enforcement was already on to Ziburis by the time he arrived. Anthony Ricco, Ziburis’ lawyer, did not respond to requests for comment.

Officers watched as Ziburis surveyed Arthur’s home and visited his law office. The heavy-set man sulking around Arthur’s office also caught the attention of a neighbor, who approached Ziburis and asked him if he needed help, Arthur says. Apparently concerned, the FBI called Arthur to warn him that Ziburis was heading to his home. By then, in part because of the harassment, Arthur and Alysa were boarding a plane to fly out of California. “It was like a movie,” Arthur says.

Alysa’s showing in Beijing in 2022 was disappointing. Burned out, she retired from the sport. Then in February, after returning to the ice after a two year hiatus, Alysa became the first US women’s figure skater to win Olympic gold since 2002—intentionally without her father by her side.

Despite her much-publicized complicated relationship with Arthur, Alysa’s success—punctuated by her signature pierced smile, racoon-tail dye job, and palpable joy for her sport—has reignited interest in the long-running case of transnational repression against her and her father. Human rights advocates and researchers have documented in recent years the lengths Beijing has taken to suppress critical voices, even those residing abroad or whose perceived transgressions date back decades.

Both Frank Liu and Matthew Ziburis were arrested on March 15, 2022. They were charged with stalking and harassing a number of Chinese dissidents in the US on behalf of Beijing. Qiang Sun, who remains at large, is believed to be in China. In December 2022, a few days after Christmas, Ziburis pleaded guilty to conspiracy to act as an illegal agent of China and conspiracy to engage in interstate stalking and harassment. He was paid more than $100,000 for his work, according to US authorities. Frank has maintained his innocence. His trial in New York is scheduled to begin pretrial briefings this summer.

Last year, during an interview with WIRED, Frank appeared to be trying to curry favor with President Donald Trump as a way to remedy his serious legal troubles. A foundation he runs had nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was also helping a friend compile a voluminous hagiography of Trump and wanted to pitch the Trump administration on a digital-currency-backed special economic zone along the border with Mexico. When asked about his legal troubles, Frank grew cagey. “I don't think it’s any big problem,” Frank said, “because we do so many good things for the United States.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Frank, whose Chinese name is Liu Fan, arrived in the US from China in 1986. He quickly set about making inroads in his new country. By the 1990s, he had cultivated deep ties within diaspora organizations in New York. He fashioned himself as a wealthy interlocutor who could build connections between Americans and officials in China. In 2005 he founded his own nongovernmental organization called the World Harmony Foundation, according to New York incorporation documents.

The foundation’s mission was both grandiose and exceptionally nebulous. Its goal is to “promote harmony between human beings and mother nature, between human beings, between human beings and society, between nations, between religions, between families, and harmony and care of human bodies.”

Frank’s main prop in this mission was something called the Harmony Bell—large and golden, rung with a wooden mallet, with the word “harmony” written on it in various languages. He hauled the bell to the United Nations headquarters in New York, to the lawn outside the US Capitol, and took a scaled-down version abroad, getting politicians and public figures to ring it. Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, rang the bell in October 2005. A hodgepodge of diplomats and politicians would do the same over the years—two presidents of Timor Leste, an Iranian Olympic official, and John Kerry all took part in Frank’s quixotic, campanological quest for world peace.

Frank was a near-constant presence at the UN, where he often jostled for pictures with diplomats and dignitaries. “No matter what you do, he suddenly pops up,” says Ian Williams, who met Frank when he served as president of the UN Correspondents Association. The primary goal of Liu’s foundation, Williams says, seemed to be furnishing various Chinese people with a way to shake hands with top UN officials. “It took me a while to realize that people were willing to pay a lot of money for a photo with the secretary general,” says Williams.

Frank’s pushy manner at the UN caught the attention of Matthew Lee, a journalist who runs the blog Inner City Press. In 2009, Lee wrote a number of posts about Frank’s monetary contributions to UN events and obtained a letter from a high-ranking UN official thanking Frank for his support. Frank traveled the next year to Beijing with a UN undersecretary general to meet with Chi Haotian, a retired general from the People's Liberation Army, according to Chinese state media reports. Frank gave him a Harmony Award on behalf of his organization. Chi was a perplexing choice for such a recognition. In 1989, Chi served as the chief of the general staff of the PLA during the Tiananmen massacre. The event was strange enough that The Wall Street Journal editorial pages took notice, describing the World Harmony Foundation as an organization “cloaked in mystery.”

Frank became particularly close with the retired US congressman Lester Wolff, whom he says he met at a UN event in the early 2000s. Wolff had spent much of his time in office focused on foreign policy, part