U.S.-based activist gets 5-year sentence as a spy in China

Joseph Kahn

BEIJING A Chinese court has sentenced a United States-based political activist to five years in prison on charges of spying for Taiwan in a case that prompted protests by Washington.

The activist, Yang Jianli, was detained in 2002, when he traveled to China to meet with dissidents and labor protesters, and was subsequently accused of spying for Taiwan.

The official Xinhua press agency, which announced the verdict on Thursday, said the trial had been conducted in a closed court in line with national security laws.

Yang, a Chinese citizen who has permanent residency in the United States, is a veteran of the 1989 democracy protests in Beijing. He later left the country and moved to suburban Boston, where he started the Foundation for China in the 21st Century, which advocates political change in China.

Banned from entering China, he visited the country using a friend's passport and traveled domestically using a false identity card, family members acknowledged. He was detained while trying to board a commercial flight.

The case is the latest of several in which China has used vague but grave charges of spying for Taiwan, its archrival, to intimidate ethnic Chinese who travel to the mainland to engage in activities that do not have the support of the one-party state.

Last year, another U.S.-based dissident, Wang Bingzhang, was sentenced to life in prison on charges of spying for Taiwan as well as plotting to bomb a Chinese embassy abroad. Gao Zhan, a sociologist based in the United States, was also convicted on spying charges after she conducted sensitive academic research in China.

The U.S. State Department and members of the U.S. Congress repeatedly protested Yang's detention without trial, which his supporters say lasted far longer than permitted under Chinese law, as well as the conditions of his imprisonment. Last month, on the second anniversary of his detention, members of Congress addressed a letter to President Hu Jintao calling Yang's treatment extraordinarily inhumane and demanding his immediate release. His trial and sentencing took place shortly thereafter.

Yang's wife, Christina Fu, who led an international campaign on his behalf, could not be reached for comment on the verdict. But the five-year sentence was fairly light given the charges against him. That suggests that China may be getting ready to deport him rather than forcing him to serve the full term. Gao was deported after her conviction on spying charges in 2001.

The charges against Yang may stem from small academic research grants made to a group he was affiliated with in California in the early 1990s. The grants had links to the Taiwan government, but China did not provide evidence of any connection between the grants and alleged espionage a decade later, according to lawyers involved in Yang's case.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice in Beijing, Liu Jianchao, rejected assertions that the trial had been unfair. "The Chinese judicial departments have been trying this case and made a sentence in complete accordance with the law," Liu said in an interview with The Associated Press. He said Yang had been allowed to meet with his lawyers numerous times and had "made a full defense."

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Source: "NYT".