A pair of Chinese scholars were caught allegedly trying to smuggle a dangerous fungus into the United States. The case has been portrayed as an agroterrorism plot, but a careful look suggests this was more likely a case of ambitious scholars utilizing an American lab on the down-low to conduct China-funded crop protection research. This is not meant to excuse the smuggling of a dangerous pathogen, but jumping to a false conclusion could unnecessarily heighten U.S.-China tensions.
The case was announced June 3, 2025 by the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of Michigan and widely reported in U.S. news media as an act of possible agro-terrorism. Mr. Zunyong Liu (刘尊勇) was caught at the Detroit airport trying to smuggle a fungus called Fusarium graminearum (禾谷镰孢菌) into the United States. Liu was refused entry and sent back to China. He was working with Ms. Yunqing Jian (简云清), a Chinese citizen conducting research at the University of Michigan who had advised Liu on how to smuggle the fungus. Ms. Jian has been detained as a flight risk.
Nearly every article on the event assumes the pair were engaged in a sinister bioterrorism plot, but ABC News reported reactions from U.S. plant pathologists who pointed out that the fungus is already present in the United States and suggested that Jian and Liu were likely motivated by career advancement. A deeper dive bolsters this conjecture.
Fusarium graminearum is a big problem in China that constantly threatens the country's wheat crop. The Chinese Government allocates millions of dollars to prevent a disease called wheat fusarium head blight (小麦赤霉病) or wheat scab caused by the fungus. A fungicide to prevent wheat scab is one of several chemicals sprayed on China's wheat crop, a so-called "one spray and three preventions" organized by government officials each spring since 2012.
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| Illustration of wheat scab disease. Source: Nantong City plant protection station. |
In April this year, Jiangsu Province official media described how Yangzhou University's plant protection faculty were advising a State-owned farm on strategies to prevent wheat fusarium rust. The article emphasized that the political importance of grain production demanded that careful measures be taken to prevent and control wheat fusarium head blight.
Last month Anhui Province announced a new program funded with RMB 652.67 million (over $90 milllion) to set up a system of forecasting the risk of wheat scab developing across the province during the growing season.
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| Drone sprays wheat crop in Anhui Province April 2025 source: Hefei Online. |
The Chinese government also funds research to address the wheat scab problem. Articles on wheat scab research in Chinese journals date back to the early 2000s. In a 2024 article in Chinese technical journal Modern Agrochemicals two Nanjing Agricultural University professors described the serious problem of wheat scab in China, chemical control, fungicide resistance and reduction of vomitoxins.
Last month China's communist party paper Sci-Tech Daily celebrated progress on a government-supported project conducted by multiple Chinese research institutes to breed wheat varieties resistant to Fusarium head blight and to improve fungal disease prevention. China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs selected the project as an achievement of the ministry's "Spark Technology" program.
The alleged fungus smugglers Ms. Jian and Mr. Liu both are affiliated with research institutes at Zhejiang University, which Sci-Tech Daily identified as leader of the Fusarium control research project. Google scholar shows Jian and Liu co-authored numerous academic papers on experiments examining resistance of Fusarium graminearum to compounds that were published in international scientific journals such as Nature Communications, New Phytologist, and Journal of Advanced Research. The publications identify both Jian and Liu as affiliated with State-supported labs for rice biology and molecular biology of plant pathogens and insects at Zhejiang University in China.
A counter-terrorism expert told CBS news that Jian and Liu's efforts to conceal the fungus indicated the couple were carrying out a terrorism plot, but this is a non sequitur. Chinese scholars do not need to be engaged in a bioterrorism project to engage in deceit and skirting of rules. The smuggling and deceit Jian and Liu engaged in are standard in China, even for prestigious scholars. In China rules are viewed as inconveniences to be evaded when they stand in the way of opportunity.
Piecing together details, a possible scenario that led to the smuggling is as follows.
When Ms. Jian went to the U.S., she and Mr. Liu probably continued their research project on Fusarium in China with Chinese government funding. On her visa application Jian did not state that she would work on Fusarium, so presumably she was in Michigan to work on another project led by her host scientist.
Jian therefore had no basis for obtaining a U.S. permit to bring the material into the country. Lacking a permit Ms. Jian probably smuggled Fusarium into the U.S. so that she could surreptitiously continue her work with Liu as a side project in the lab where she was working at the University of Michigan. Mr. Liu was caught bringing in the latest batch.
This does not exonerate the couple. Smuggling a hazardous substance into the country is a serious violation of law. Ms. Jian also apparently utilized a U.S. university laboratory to conduct research funded by the Chinese government without authorization or knowledge of the lab's director.
The framing of the case is the concern. The does not look like a state-sponsored plot. Ms. Jian's and Mr. Liu's backgrounds do not suggest a terrorism or bioweapon motive. We should not jump to the conclusion that this incident is proof that China is planning a biological attack. (Of course this does not disprove that possibility either.)
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