The Guardian
Jul 22, 2019 - 4 min
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Two roommates travelling in Florida found themselves caught in the teeth of espionage fears. Wang Yuhao and Zhang Jielun were painted by the US media as spies, embodying "a theory of Chinese espionage where multiple small bits of sensitive information are collected by everyone from students to tourists." Now sitting in a Florida penitentiary waiting to be deported, these two men may have been victims of misunderstanding, and a now more common racial stereotype, in the US. Eric Fish investigates.