China's disappeared: Some of the people who vanished at the hands of the Chinese state in 2018

Canadian citizens, a famous actress, a security insider and a student Marxist disappeared in China this year
The Associated Press
Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig briefly disappeared this month before it was revealed they were taken into custody by Chinese officials. The two men's detention followed the arrest and detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou by Canadian authorities. 

It's not uncommon for individuals who speak out against the government to disappear in China, but the scope of the "disappeared" has expanded since Xi Jinping came to power in 2013.
Not only dissidents and activists, but also high-level officials, Marxists, foreigners and even a movie star — people who never publicly opposed the ruling Communist Party — have been whisked away by police to unknown destinations.
The widening dragnet throws into stark relief the lengths to which Xi's administration is willing to go to maintain its control and authority.
Here's a look at some of the people who went missing in 2018 at the hands of the Chinese state:

Canadian citizens
China threatened "grave consequences" if Canada did not release high-tech executive Meng Wanzhou, shortly after the Huawei chief financial officer was detained in Vancouver earlier this month for extradition to the U.S.
The apparent consequences materialized within days, when two Canadian men went missing in China. 

Both turned up in the hands of state security on suspicion of endangering "national security", a nebulous category of crimes that has been levied against foreigners in recent years.
Former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig was taken by authorities from a Beijing street late in the evening, a person familiar with his case said. 

He is allowed one consular visit a month and has not been granted access to a lawyer, as is standard for state security cases.

Kovrig, an adviser with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, remains in detention in China.

Also detained is Michael Spavor, who organizes tours to North Korea from the border city of Dandong. 

China has not said whether their detentions are related to Meng's, but a similar scenario unfolded in the past.
A Canadian couple was detained in 2014 on national security grounds shortly after Canada arrested Su Bin, a Chinese man wanted for industrial espionage in the U.S.
Like Spavor, Kevin and Julia Garratt lived in Dandong, where they ran a popular coffee shop for nearly a decade. 

They also worked with a Christian charity that provided food to North Korean refugees.
While Julia Garratt was released on bail, her husband was held for more than two years before he was deported in September 2016 — about two months after Su pleaded guilty in the U.S.

Tax-evading actress
Fan Bingbing was living the dream. 

Since a breakthrough role at the age of 17, Fan has headlined dozens of movies and TV series, and parlayed her success into modelling, fashion design and other ventures that have made her one of the highest-paid celebrities in the world.
All this made her a potent icon of China's economic success, until authorities reminded Fan — and her legion of admirers — that even she was not untouchable.
For about four months, Fan vanished from public view. 

Her Weibo social media account, which has more than 63 million followers, fell silent. 

Her management office in Beijing was vacated. 

Her birthday on Sept. 16 came and went with only a handful of greetings from entertainment notables.
When she finally resurfaced, it was to apologize.
"I sincerely apologize to society, to the friends who love and care for me, to the people, and to the country's tax bureau," Fan said in a letter posted on Weibo on Oct. 3.
Chinese actress Fan Bingbing poses for photographers upon arrival at the opening of the Cannes film festival in southern France in May. One of China's highest paid celebrities, Fan disappeared from public view for four months before apologizing for tax-evasion. 

Fan later admitted to tax evasion. 

State news agency Xinhua reported that she and the companies she represents had been ordered to pay taxes and penalties totaling 900 million yuan ($130 million US).
"Without the party and the country's great policies, without the people's loving care, there would be no Fan Bingbing," she wrote, a cautionary tale for other Chinese celebrities.
Xinhua concurred in a commentary on her case: "Everyone is equal before the law, there are no `superstars' or `big shots.' No one can despise the law and hope to be lucky."

Security insider
Unlike most swallowed up by China's opaque security apparatus, Meng Hongwei knew exactly what to expect.
Meng — no relation to the Huawei executive — is a vice minister of public security who was also head of Interpol, the France-based organization that facilitates police cooperation across borders.
When he was appointed to the top post, human rights groups expressed concern that China would use Interpol as a tool to rein in political enemies around the world.
Instead, he was captured by the same security forces he represented.
Former Interpol president Meng Hongwei delivers his opening address at the Interpol World congress in Singapore in July 2017. 

In September, Meng became the latest high-ranking official caught in Xi's banner anti-corruption campaign. 

The initiative is a major reason for the Chinese leader's broad popularity, but he has been accused of using it to eliminate political rivals.
Xi pledged to confront both high-level "tigers" and low-level "flies" in his crackdown on graft — a promise he has fulfilled by ensnaring prominent officials.
Meng was missing for weeks before Chinese authorities said he was being investigated for taking bribes and other crimes. 

A Chinese delegation later delivered a resignation letter from Meng to Interpol headquarters.
His wife Grace Meng told the AP that she does not believe the charges against her husband. 

The last message he sent her was an emoji of a knife.

Daring photographer
Lu Guang made his mark photographing the everyday lives of HIV patients in central China. 

They were poor villagers who had contracted the virus after selling their own blood to eke out a living — at a going rate of $7 a pint, they told Lu.
A former factory worker, Lu traversed China's vast reaches to capture reality at its margins. 

He explored environmental degradation, industrial pollution and other gritty topics generally avoided by Chinese journalists, who risk punishment if they pursue stories considered to be sensitive or overly critical.
His work won him major accolades such as the World Press Photo prize, but his prominence likely also put him on the government's radar.
This November, Lu was travelling through East Turkestan, the far west colony that has deployed a vast security network in the name of fighting terrorism. 

He was participating in an exchange with other photographers, after which he was to meet a friend in nearby Sichuan province. 

He never showed up.
More than a month after he disappeared, his family was notified that he had been arrested in East Turkestan, according to his wife Xu Xiaoli. 

She declined to elaborate on the nature of the charges.

Marxist student
In the past, the political activists jailed in China were primarily those who fought for democracy and an end to one-party rule. 

They posed a direct ideological threat to the Communist Party.
This year, the party locked in on a surprising new target: young Marxists.
About 50 students and recent graduates of the country's most prestigious universities convened in August in Shenzhen, an electronics manufacturing hub, to rally for factory workers attempting to form a union
Among them was Yue Xin, a 20-something fresh out of Peking University. 

Earlier this year, she made headlines by calling for the elite school to release the results of its investigation into a decades-old rape case.
This time, she was one of the most vocal leaders of the labour rights group, appearing in photographs with her fist up in a Marxist salute and wearing a T-shirt that said "Unity is strength" — the name of a patriotic Chinese communist song.
Yue, a passionate student of Marx and Mao Zedong, espoused the same values as the party. 

She wrote an open letter to Xi and the party's central leadership saying all the students wanted was justice for Jasic Technology labourers.
Her letter quoted Xi's own remarks: "We must adhere to the guiding position of Marxism." 

Yue called Marx "our mentor" and likened the ideas of him and Mao to spiritual sustenance.
Nonetheless, she ended up among those rounded up in a raid on the apartment the activists were staying at in Shenzhen. 

While most have been released, Yue remains unaccounted for.
She has been missing for four months.

China's student activists cast rare light on brewing labor unrest

By Sue-Lin Wong and Christian Shepherd

SHENZHEN, China -- When Shen Mengyu graduated with a master’s degree from a top Chinese university in 2015, she could have landed a comfortable job in government or at one of China’s internet giants.

People hold banners at a demonstration in support of factory workers of Jasic Technology, outside Yanziling police station in Pingshan district, Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China August 6, 2018. 

Instead, she went to work at a car parts factory in the southern city of Guangzhou, pursuing her interest in labor activism.
In May, she was fired for organizing workers at the plant. 

Undeterred, she began advocating for workers trying to form an autonomous trade union at Jasic International, a welding machinery exporter in nearby Shenzhen.
Shen is part of a cohort of activists across China who have been supporting and publicizing worker protests and detentions at a time of slowing economic growth.
The activists include students and recent graduates, as well as retired factory workers and Communist Party members.
While they appear to be small in number, the activists are drawing rare attention to calls for greater union representation from Chinese workers, particularly in the south, where demands for more pay are growing.
This unrest poses a challenge for the ruling Communist Party, which opposes independent labor action and punishes protesters. 

It also views the activists as a threat to its authority.
Shen told Reuters last week the authorities had been intimidating her parents to get her to stop her activism.
On Saturday night, after dining with her parents near the Jasic factory, Shen was bundled into a car by three unidentified men, two student activists from Peking University who were at the scene told Reuters.
“Mengyu was shouting ‘What are you doing? Let me go, let me go’,” one of the activists said. “Everything happened so quickly, we ran to get help and by the time we came back she and the car had disappeared.”
The students said they reported the abduction to the police, who doubted their account and refused to take down crucial parts of their statement. 

They were also told that video cameras at the location of the incident were broken.
Calls to Shen and the police went unanswered on Monday.
Local police said on their official social media account Monday that they had been in contact with Shen’s parents.
“This is a matter regarding a family dispute, it is not a kidnapping,” it said, without further explanation. 

Reuters was unable to reach Shen’s parents.

People hold banners at a demonstration in support of factory workers of Jasic Technology, outside Yanziling police station in Pingshan district, Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China August 6, 2018. 

WORKER PROTESTS
Protests at the Jasic factory broke out in early July after seven workers attempting to form a union and elect their own leaders were laid off. 

On July 27, after two weeks of protests, the police detained 29 people, including laid-off workers, their families and supporters.
Hundreds of Chinese university students penned open letters on social media in support of the workers, and around 20 traveled to Shenzhen, in Guangdong province.
Unions in China have to register with the official All-China Federation of Trade Unions. 

The federation is more responsive to the demands of management than workers.
On August 6, around fifty student activists and supporters of the Jasic workers protested outside the police station where the workers were detained in Shenzhen.
“Lots of fellow students say: this incident is about workers, what does this have to do with students? I’ll tell them one thing: today’s students are tomorrow’s workers,” said Yue Xin, 22, a recent graduate of Peking University, in a video from the protest she shared online.
Yue, currently a factory worker in southern China, gained prominence in April for pressing her university to make public an investigation into a decades-old rape and suicide case.
The people who traveled to Shenzhen have been facing pressure from their universities, parents and officials, according to nine activists interviewed by Reuters.
“My university advisor has called me repeatedly, accusing me of being involved in illegal activities, “ said one activist from a Guangdong university. 

The activist said he had been told “to think very carefully about what I was doing and how it might impact my studies and my future.”
Some supporters were intercepted on their way to Shenzhen and sent home, the students said.
In interviews, some activists said they were motivated by growing inequality in China, and heard about worker protests in online forums before posts were removed by authorities.
They said they were also exposed to labor issues at student-run university clubs and reading groups.
“Both my parents are factory workers so I have always had an interest in labor rights,” said one of the activists who saw Shen taken away.
The students often speak the same language of Marxist theory and egalitarianism used by the Communist Party, yet have found themselves at odds with the authorities.
Last November, a Peking University graduate, Zhang Yunfan, was detained in Guangzhou after founding a reading group focused on improving the plight of factory workers.
In an online statement on July 29, Jasic denied mistreating workers or blocking their union. 

It said it fired some workers in accordance with the law and that a union was being established. 

Jasic did not respond to a faxed request for further comment.
Shenzhen police said a group of former Jasic workers who illegally entered the factory were being held for investigation. 

The Shenzhen ministry of public security and the detention center where the workers are being held did not respond to faxed requests for comment.

ACTIVISTS HARASSED
The authorities have been keeping close tabs on the factory workers, students and other supporters, according to interviews and eyewitness accounts.
The students -- who are renting accommodation near the Jasic factory – say they have had to move three times, as police pressure landlords to evict them.
People who appeared to be plain clothes police were keeping a close eye on the building where the activists were staying during a recent visit by Reuters.
The activists said police had also set up a fake factory recruitment stand outside the building and infiltrated into the group a mole posing as a former factory worker. 

The factory workers and their supporters communicated with Reuters through multiple phone numbers and WeChat accounts that were continuously shut down.
China does not publish official statistics on numbers of worker protests and strikes.

DIRE CONDITIONS
Former workers at Jasic, which employs more than 1,000 people, say conditions in the company’s factory are dire.
“Sometimes we would work for one month straight without any time off,” said Huang Lanfeng, 25, a former Jasic employee who was detained for protesting. 

“They wouldn’t let us freely quit and they even watched us go to the toilet.”
She added: “I’ve worked at a lot of factories and none were as bad as Jasic.”
Geoffrey Crothall, communications director at the Kong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, said the protests could resonate at other factories.
“It certainly has the potential to be replicated if the workers from another factory are similarly motivated and well organized,” he said.
The Communist Party has pushed for unions to better protect workers, but the efforts were “superficial”, he said.
“It really does impinge on the party’s legitimacy.”

HARSH TREATMENT
As of Sunday, 15 of the detained workers and supporters had been freed. 

Four detainees told Reuters they were treated harshly in detention, with police threatening them with death and saying they would not be released unless they confessed.
The workers’ accounts jibe with stories from detained advocates in other incidents and follow an established pattern of Chinese police interrogation, according to Patrick Poon, a Hong Kong-based researcher at Amnesty International.
The detentions have become an even greater rallying cry for the activists.
“What started out as a labor dispute turned into unfair dismissals and police abuse which has galvanized supporters from both around the country and around the world,” Shen told Reuters on August 6, before she was taken away in the car.