Chinese University of Michigan student accused of smuggling biological pathogen into US to remain in detention for now

Kara Berg, The Detroit News on Jun 5, 2025

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DETROIT — A detention hearing for a Chinese University of Michigan scholar accused of trying to smuggle a biological pathogen into the U.S. was adjourned Thursday as she seeks to retain her own attorney.

Yunqing Jian, 33, allegedly tried to bring Fusarium graminearum into the U.S., which federal prosecutors allege could be used as an agricultural terrorism weapon to target food crops.

Jian's boyfriend, 34-year-old Zunyong Liu, also has been charged. Before preventing Liu from entering the U.S. and sending him back to China, investigators searched the man’s iPhones. One contained an article titled “2018 Plant-Pathogen Warfare under Changing Climate Conditions,” an FBI agent wrote. The article describes how Fusarium graminearum is an example of a destructive disease and pathogen for crops.

Liu and Jian worked together at the UM lab until April 2024, when Liu returned to China.

At Jian's detention hearing Thursday, she consented to waive the hearing until next week because she did not have an attorney retained. She will remain in federal detention until her hearing June 13. Her attorney, appointed public defender Casey Swanson, was not available for comment Thursday.

Jian is a citizen of China who received a doctorate degree in plant pathogens from Zhejiang University, and investigators say they have discovered information describing her membership in and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. Prosecutors say she received money from a Chinese foundation funded largely by the Chinese government to conduct post-doctoral work, including research on a fungus known as Fusarium graminearum, a biological pathogen that can cause devastating diseases in crops.

Prosecutors say her boyfriend illegally smuggled a biological pathogen into the U.S. at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport on July 27.

"When Customs and Border Protection officers questioned Liu, he made false statements to CBP officers about the purpose of his visit to the United States, and his knowledge of the existence of the biological pathogen in his possession," an FBI special agent wrote in the criminal filing.

"Ultimately, Liu admitted to smuggling the pathogen and stated that he brought the pathogen into the United States so that he could conduct research on it at a laboratory at the University of Michigan where his girlfriend, Jian, worked," the agent added.

Jian denied knowing her boyfriend planned to study in the U.S. or bring biological materials into the country, the FBI agent wrote, and denied helping Liu’s research on Fusarium graminearum.

Fusarium graminearum is a strain of a plant pathogen that causes “head blight,” according to the criminal case, a disease that can devastate wheat, barley, maize and rice.

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