US naval officer jailed for passing sensitive information to China

US naval officer Wenheng Zhao pleaded guilty to passing sensitive information and blueprints to Chinese intelligence and has been sentenced to 27 months in Jail.

Zhao was a petty officer working at the Californian Ventura County naval base.

According to BBC, he passed on military information about operational instructions, electrical diagrams, and blueprints for the radar system installed in the US military base in Okinawa, Japan, from 2021 to 2023

In return, he accepted bribes amounting to almost $14,886 between August 2021 to May 2023, according to the US government sources.

The US Navy's base in Okinawa is critical to its operations in Asia. The US has made what it calls the "Indo-Pacific" region a key security priority, and in recent years has worked on shoring up alliances there to counter China's extensive military might.

Zhao is a naturalised US citizen who was born in China. He immigrated to the US in 2009, became a citizen in 2012, and enlisted in the Navy 5 years later.

He was arrested last August in California and pleaded guilty to the spying charges in October.

China's embassy in Washington on Monday denied the accusations and said it was not aware of the details of Zhao's case. It further accused the US government and the media of hyping up espionage cases, many of which it said were based on unproven allegations.