China Sentences Prominent Dissident to 5 Years

China sentenced a high-profile dissident to five years in jail Thursday on charges of spying for Taiwan and entering China illegally.

The case, involving Boston-area resident Yang Jianli, has received widespread attention in the United States and Western Europe. Yang, a scholar and veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, was blacklisted after he left the country later that year.

He entered China using a friend’s passport in 2002 and was detained in late April of that year in southern China after visiting the northeastern rust belt to study labor unrest.

Mo Shaoping, Yang’s lawyer, called Thursday’s sentence unjust. The family is considering an appeal after it sees the written decision, due in five days.

The Taiwan charges are baseless, Mo said, and Yang’s use of someone else’s passport is an administrative offense that carries a maximum of five days’ detention. “Since I’m defending his innocence, I, of course, dispute the sentence,” he said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a news conference Thursday that the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court acted properly. “China’s judicial mechanism heard and delivered judgment on this case in complete accordance with Chinese law,” he said.

The U.S. State Department and human rights groups have called repeatedly for Yang’s release, and U.S. lawmakers warned last month that his continued detention could strain Sino-American relations. His attorney and family maintain that his imprisonment of more than two years without sentencing is a violation of Chinese law.

Yang, 40, provided financial support for the Tiananmen democracy protests, which ended in a military crackdown that killed several hundred and possibly thousands of Chinese citizens.

The U.S. government has less ability to apply pressure because Yang is a permanent resident but not an American citizen. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said it was aware of Thursday’s legal decision but had no comment. The case was complicated by Yang’s decision to misrepresent his identity, an action that has made most governments more wary since Sept. 11, 2001.

Yang’s activities overseas have arguably irked the Chinese government at least as much as his limited role in helping finance the 1989 protests. While earning doctorates in mathematics at UC Berkeley and political economy at Harvard, he helped organize several conferences advocating peaceful resistance to Communist Party rule in China. His wife, Christina Fu, has helped spearhead the campaign for his release.

It’s not clear why Yang decided to reenter China knowing he would be a target. “You have to ask him,” said Nicholas Becquelin, Hong Kong-based research director of Human Rights in China. “He probably hoped he could get away with using a friend’s passport. He took a gamble and he lost.”

Lu Siqing, head of the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China, said the real fault for any misrepresentation lies with China, which refused to allow one of its citizens to enter the country, a violation of U.N. principles. “I don’t think he did anything wrong,” he said.

China announced the sentence as a brief item on the government-run New China News Agency, saying that Yang was told by “a Taiwanese spy organization” in San Francisco in 1991 to “collect confidential papers of the Chinese government.” The news agency also said he later established his own spy agency with funds from Taiwan.

Yang’s brother, Jianjun, called that charge ridiculous. The only money Yang distributed when he returned was a few hundred dollars to family members, Jianjun said. “We have absolutely nothing to do with Taiwan,” he said.

Relatives said they had no indication China would deport Yang as it had done in other high-profile cases. But human rights experts said Yang was well positioned to become a bargaining chip for China. Beijing has a history of releasing marquee detainees at politically strategic moments.

Chinese dissident Wang Dan was released in 1998, two months before President Clinton made his first trip to China. And two dissidents were released in 1994 just as Secretary of State Warren Christopher visited Beijing.

Releasing human rights detainees and promptly sending them overseas should not be interpreted as a sign of growing tolerance on China’s part, said Gianni Criveller, a Hong Kong-based theologian and watchdog of religious issues in China. Exiling them ensures that they have no effect on the domestic debate, he said. “And they shouldn’t be in prison in the first place,” he added.

Becquelin of Human Rights in China said the length of time required to hand down Yang’s decision suggested there could have been a dispute within China’s Politburo. Beijing also sought to send a clear message to other dissidents, he said.

“It’s significant that next month is the 15th anniversary of June 4th and Tiananmen,” he said.

“The government intends to continue its repression of June 4th activists.”