A jury in Cincinnati has convicted a Chinese intelligence agent over his role in a scheme to recruit spies and steal sensitive American aviation technology for Beijing. Xu Yanjun, a deputy division director at the Chinese Ministry of State Security, Beijing’s top intelligence agency, was found guilty on all four counts, including conspiring to and attempting to commit economic espionage and stealing trade secrets, according to the Justice Department. He was the first-ever Chinese intelligence agent to be extradited to the United States to stand trial. Xu was transferred from Belgium in 2018 after an engineer he targeted for recruitment cooperated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to lure him to the European country. The companies Xu targeted included GE Aviation, an Ohio-headquartered company that has designed an exclusive composite aircraft engine fan that no other company in the world has. Xu had attempted to steal the proprietary engine …