FBI: Search for visiting Chinese scholar is agency priority

This undated photo provided by The University of Illinois Police Department shows Yingying Zhang. Police said the FBI is investigating the disappearance of Zhang, a Chinese woman from a central Illinois university town, as a kidnapping. Zhang was about a month into a yearlong appointment at the University of Illinois' Urbana-Champaign when she disappeared June 9, 2017. (Courtesy of the University of Illinois Police Department via AP)
This undated photo provided by The University of Illinois Police Department shows Yingying Zhang. Police said the FBI is investigating the disappearance of Zhang, a Chinese woman from a central Illinois university town, as a kidnapping. Zhang was about a month into a yearlong appointment at the University of Illinois' Urbana-Champaign when she disappeared June 9, 2017. (Courtesy of the University of Illinois Police Department via AP)

URBANA, Ill. (AP) - The FBI says the search for a visiting Chinese scholar missing from the University of Illinois is a national priority for the agency.

Jon Holloway, assistant special agent in charge of criminal investigation at the Springfield FBI office, discussed the FBI's efforts Thursday night at a campus meeting about 26-year-old Yingying Zhang's disappearance.

Holloway says updates are being regularly sent to the office of the FBI's acting director and U.S. field offices.

Zhang was last seen on a surveillance video getting into a black Saturn Astra in Urbana on the afternoon of June 9. Police have labeled the case a kidnapping but haven't ruled out other scenarios.

Earlier Thursday, her father Ronggao Zhang made an emotional appeal for his daughter's safe return in an interview with The (Champaign) News-Gazette.

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