China Holds Secret Trial for Rights Lawyer After 3 Years in Detention

By Chris Buckley

Wang Quanzhang, left, and his wife Li Wenzu, with their child in eastern China’s Shandong Province in 2015.

BEIJING — Nearly three and half years after Wang Quanzhang disappeared in China’s fierce offensive against human rights lawyers, he faced charges of subversion in a closed trial on Wednesday, capping a year when the Communist Party redoubled efforts to stifle political and religious dissent.
Mr. Wang, 42, was the last to be prosecuted among the hundreds of rights lawyers and activists rounded up in a sweep that started on July 9, 2015. 

In a blaze of propaganda, the police accused him and other combative attorneys of disrupting trials, fanning discontent, and plotting to overthrow the Communist Party.
But while others detained in the crackdown were released with warnings, put on bail after making rehearsed confessions on television, or tried and sentenced, Mr. Wang remained held in secrecy. 

His trial was also swaddled in security to ward off protests.
“This whole process has been illegal, so how could I expect an open and fair trial?” Mr. Wang’s wife, Li Wenzu, said in a telephone interview before the hearing. 

“But my demand is still that he be freed as not guilty, because that’s what he is.”
The police and guards kept Ms. Li from leaving her apartment in Beijing to attend the trial in Tianjin, a port city about 65 miles southeast from her home in the capital. 

During Mr. Wang’s detention, the authorities rejected repeated attempts by her and a succession of attorneys to visit him or find out more about his status and health.
The mobile phone of Liu Weiguo, the lawyer who represented Mr. Wang at the trial was turned off on Wednesday evening, and it was unclear when the trial ended. 

But the Tianjin Second Intermediate People’s Court that heard the case said on its website that a verdict would be announced at a later date. 

“Because state secrets were involved, the court decided under the law not to hold a public trial,” the statement said.

Li Wenzu shaved her head earlier this month to protest the detention of her husband, Wang Quanzhang, a human rights lawyer.

“This will be a show trial, carefully censored and tightly controlled,” said Terence Halliday, a research professor at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago who studies Chinese defense lawyers. “Through Wang Quanzhang’s protracted disappearance, China’s state security and public security have been sending a chilling message to activist lawyers — keep silent or this could be your fate too.”
Still, one detail slipped out from the secret proceedings that suggested Mr. Wang remained unbowed. 

While in the courtroom, he dismissed his lawyer, Mr. Liu, who was not chosen by his family, Ms. Li said, citing a message from Mr. Liu. 

That step may have forced an adjournment in the trial, but Ms. Li had no further details.
Mr. Wang’s case, though, has been overshadowed this year by other controversies in China as Xi Jinping, the party leader and president, has sought to extinguish potential threats to party rule.
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims in East Turkestan, a northwest region, have been detained in concentration camps where they are forced to renounce their religious beliefs and pledge loyalty to the party. 

Several independent Protestant churches have been shut down, and an outspoken pastor of one was detained. 

Two Canadians have been detained and accused of threatening national security in what supporters say was reprisal for a Chinese telecommunications executive’s arrest in Canada.
The detentions of lawyers and advocates in 2015 were a turning point on the way to more hard-line policies, said experts and friends of Mr. Wang. 

His prolonged detention came to symbolize the Communist Party’s growing readiness to override promised legal protections if they got in the way of silencing perceived threats, they said.
“The mass detention and surveillance campaign and other persecution in East Turkestan are the worst examples we know of at the moment, but they are connected to what is going on more widely in China,” said Eva Pils, a professor of law at King’s College London who studies China’s human rights lawyers and knows Mr. Wang. 

“Human rights defenders are very openly characterized as enemies of the people, connected to other, outside enemies.”

Peter Dahlin, who was detained and then deported from China, at home in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2016.

In the face of official pressure and rebuffs, Ms. Li and the families of other detained lawyers coalesced into a determined and creative resistance.
They have protested using red buckets, attempted walking to the detention center where Mr. Wang was held, and this month they shaved their heads to protest what they said was judges’ failure to enforce Mr. Wang’s rights under Chinese law. (The Mandarin Chinese word for hair (fa) sounds similar to the word for law.)
“In Chinese, having no hair sounds like having no law,” Ms. Li said. 

“We meant that we can do without our hair, but we can’t do without law.”
The prosecutors’ allegations against Mr. Wang appeared to distill several themes that the government has used to attack China’s human rights lawyers as a whole.
They accused him of “stirring up trouble” by calling together lawyers and supporters to demand that detainees be freed; of maligning China’s legal system online while representing members of a banned spiritual movement, Falun Gong; and colluding with a foreign-funded group to “propagate methods and tricks for resisting the government,” according to a 2017 prosecutors’ document shared by Peter Dahlin, a Swedish rights advocate named in the allegations.
Mr. Dahlin, who was detained in Beijing for 23 days in 2016 and deported from China for his work helping rights activists, said he was sure the document was authentic and rejected the claim that Mr. Wang’s activities amounted to “subversion of state power.”

Police officers blocking the streets on Wednesday in front of the Number 2 Intermediate People’s Court in Tianjin, where Mr. Wang is being tried.

Mr. Wang was born in Shandong Province, east China, and was drawn to activism even before he had graduated from law school. 

Like many other Chinese attorneys who take on contentious cases, his clients were mostly ordinary citizens in disputes with officials over land seizures, detentions and police abuses.
Even more than most rights lawyers, he has a stubborn streak, his wife and friends said.
His unbending personality “kept him going through years of abusive, incommunicado detention and given him the strength to refuse a forced confession,” Michael Caster, a human rights advocate who formerly worked in Beijing with Mr. Wang, said by email. 

“He was never one to be intimidated by threats from judges or by the physical abuse of police.”
When asked about Mr. Wang and others detained in the 2015 crackdown, Chinese officials have said that they have been given all their legal rights. 

But legal experts have said that his long, secretive confinement and lack of access to his own lawyers flouted China’s laws. 

In October, a United Nations Human Rights Council group condemned the secretive detention of Mr. Wang and two other Chinese advocates as a violation of international laws.
Chinese courts come under the guidance of the Communist Party and rarely, if ever, find defendants innocent in politically charged cases. 

Some of his supporters said Mr. Wang could be given a suspended prison sentence like other some lawyers who were detained in 2015. 

But others were less hopeful of early release.
“Even though Quanzhang is innocent, the outlook is bleak,” said Xie Yanyi, a recently disbarred Chinese rights attorney who tried to attend Mr. Wang’s trial. 

“Wang Quanzhang’s wife and loved ones need to be mentally prepared.”
Mr. Xie said he was blocked by plain clothes officers from trying to reach the court in Tianjin and supporters who got near the courthouse were bundled away by the police, said reporters there.
Mr. Wang’s wife, Ms. Li, said that until he was detained she knew little about his work. 

But she has since become a savvy advocate for her husband while trying to protect their 6-year old son. 

In a public letter in July addressed to Mr. Wang, she said she told their son that his father had gone off to battle monsters.
“Let’s go help dad fight the monsters,” the son told a friend, Ms. Li wrote. 

“After they’re beaten, dad can come home.”

China's State Terrorism

The Foreign Billionaires, Activists and Missionaries Detained in China

By Javier C. Hernández

Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat who was detained in Beijing on Monday.
BEIJING — Missionaries. Corporate investigators. Billionaires. Legal activists.

China has a long history of arresting or holding foreigners for mysterious reasons, often in a tit-for-tat play to put pressure on overseas rivals. 

In recent years the number of such detentions has increased, a disturbing trend for foreigners visiting or conducting business in the country.
Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat who was detained in Beijing on Monday, is the latest foreigner to be held by the Chinese in retribution for the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's CFO, in Canada, this month.
Here are some recent cases of foreigners caught in the cross hairs of China’s opaque legal system.

The Missionaries

Julia and Kevin Garratt back in Canada in 2016. The couple were arrested in 2014 by the Chinese authorities on “suspicion of stealing and spying to obtain state secrets.”

Kevin and Julia Garratt, Christian aid workers from Canada, were best known in Dandong, a Chinese city near the border with North Korea, for operating a popular coffee shop. 

They also worked with a charity that provided food to North Koreans. 

But in 2014, they were arrested by the Chinese authorities on “suspicion of stealing and spying to obtain state secrets.”
Ms. Garratt was released on bail and allowed to leave China. 

Mr. Garratt spent two years in prison before his eventual release. 

Both have denied the accusations.
The Chinese have arrested the Garratts in hopes of pressuring Canada into releasing Su Bin, a Chinese spy who was being held in Vancouver, after the United States accused him of stealing military data and sought extradition. 

The Billionaire

The government of China has never specified the reasons for the abduction of Xiao Jianhua, a wealthy and well-connected Chinese-born Canadian citizen.

On a January morning last year, Xiao Jianhua, one of China’s most politically connected financiers, was escorted out of the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong in a wheelchair by unidentified men. 

Xiao had rare insight into the financial holdings of China’s most powerful families, having made his fortune investing in banks, insurers and real estate.
Xiao, a Chinese-born Canadian citizen, is now believed to be in custody in the mainland, helping the authorities with investigations into the finance industry, though the government has not specified the reasons for his abduction.

The Corporate Investigators

Peter Humphrey, left, and his wife, Yu Yingzeng, both corporate investigators, came under scrutiny as part of a Chinese government investigation into fraud and corruption at GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical maker.

Peter Humphrey, a British private investigator, and his wife, Yu Yingzeng, a Chinese-born American citizen, ran a small consulting firm in Shanghai that specialized in “discreet investigations” for multinational companies, focusing on issues like counterfeiting and embezzlement.
But as an investigation by the Chinese government into fraud and corruption at GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical maker, escalated in 2013, Humphrey and Yu, who advised the firm, came under scrutiny as well. 

The couple were arrested and charged with violating the rights of Chinese citizens by obtaining private information. 

Humphrey and Yu served prison sentences of about two years.

The Legal Advocate

Peter Dahlin, the Swedish co-founder of a nongovernmental organization that provided legal aid to Chinese citizens, was forced to apologize on national television and then deported.

Peter Dahlin, a Swedish citizen, was the co-founder of a nongovernmental organization in Beijing that provided legal aid to Chinese citizens. 

His work soon caught the attention of the authorities, who were cracking down on foreign nongovernmental organizations and human rights lawyers.
In early 2016, Mr. Dahlin was detained and interrogated for 23 days by China’s Ministry of State Security. 

He was forced to record a confession and to apologize on national television. 

Then he was deported.

The Fugitive’s Family

Victor and Cynthia Liu, who are American citizens, in an image provided by family friends. They have been held in China for months in what some describe as a bid to lure back their father, Liu Changming, a former bank executive who is among China’s most-wanted fugitives.

Liu Changming, a former executive at a state-owned bank in China, is among China’s most-wanted fugitives.
He is accused of playing a central role in a $1.4 billion fraud case.
He fled the country in 2007.
Now, in what some describe as a bid to lure Liu back, the Chinese government is preventing his wife and children, who are American citizens, from leaving China.
Liu’s wife, Sandra Han, and their children, Victor and Cynthia, arrived in China in June to visit an ailing relative.
Han was detained, and the children have been held for months under a practice known as an exit ban.

The Kiwi Vassal

Campaign calling for New Zealand to protect China expert gathers pace

Anne-Marie Brady became a target after the release of a paper on Chinese foreign influence last year

By Eleanor Ainge Roy in Dunedin

 Anne-Marie Brady, professor on China at the University of Canterbury.

More than 150 global China experts have added their voices to demands that the New Zealand government protect Professor Anne-Marie Brady, a China scholar who has been the victim of a year-long harassment campaign.
Brady, an expert in Chinese politics at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, had her home and office burgled in February, and her car sabotaged last month.
Brady became a target after the release of a paper on Chinese foreign influence in 2017 and has asked the New Zealand’s government for extra security for herself and her family.

Jacinda Ardern urged to protect China critic after 'harassment'

After the government failed to respond, academics, human rights activists and journalists within New Zealand last week called on the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, to step in and provide security for Brady.
Now 150 China experts from around the world have signed an open letter calling for action.
The letter states that under Xi Jinping’s rule domestic repression in China has increased, “as illustrated by the fate of hundreds of human rights lawyers and activists rounded up in 2015”, as well as the “re-education” camps in East Turkestan.
At the same time, the Chinese government targeted critics overseas, the letter states.
“Another form of this escalation are the unprecedented attacks on foreign scholars and researchers of contemporary China, be it in the form of Cultural Revolution-style in-class harassment for their views and opinions, denial of visas, threatened or actual libel suits or, in some cases, detentions during research visits in mainland China.”
“Brady has become the target of a series of incidents which, taken together with attacks from Party-directed media, are consistent with an intimidation campaign.
“New Zealand authorities have been less than forthcoming in their support for a prominent scholar targeted by a foreign power, even adopting a dismissive posture – an attitude appreciated by PRC state media.”

The 165 signatories include global China experts from 17 countries, including American author, journalist and social commentator Bill Bishop, Danielle Cave from the International Cyber Policy Centre and Swedish human rights activist Peter Dahlin.
Last week Brady told the Guardian she and her family had requested security assistance from the government but it was not forthcoming. 

“I am really concerned about the safety of my family. About four months ago we asked for more protection from the New Zealand security intelligence service … We haven’t had a reply,” Brady said.
“We are doing everything we can to improve security in our home. But New Zealand is a very open society... We’re just doing the best that we can by ourselves, but we’re not security specialists.”

Open letter
By Sinopsis and Jichang Lulu

Under Xi Jinping’s rule, the PRC Party-state has intensified domestic repression to levels not seen in decades, as illustrated by the fate of hundreds of human rights lawyers and activists rounded up in 2015, or most shockingly, the build-up of “re-education” detention centers in East Turkestan, holding hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities.
The wave of domestic repression has been accompanied by increasing efforts to limit freedom of expression even beyond the PRC’s borders, both in overseas Chinese communities, where independent media have been largely taken over by entities connected with the CCP United Front and Propaganda systems, and even among foreign entities, such as academic publishers or commercial firms.
Another form of this escalation are the unprecedented attacks on foreign scholars and researchers of contemporary China, be it in the form of Cultural Revolution-style in-class harassment for their views and opinions, denial of visas, threatened or actual libel suits or, in some cases, detentions during research visits in Mainland China.
In New Zealand, Anne-Marie Brady, an academic who investigated the CCP’s influence in local politics has become the target of a series of incidents which, taken together with attacks from Party-directed media, are consistent with an intimidation campaign. 

New Zealand authorities have been less than forthcoming in their support for a prominent scholar targeted by a foreign power, even adopting a dismissive posture – an attitude appreciated by PRC state media.
In response, we have initiated an open letter in support of Brady and her research. 

The letter, to be published on the Sinopsis website on Thursday 6 December, will remain open for signatures for approximately one week. 

The initial 169 signatories include academics, think-tankers, journalists, human-rights activists, politicians and others, based in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Australia, China, Japan, Argentina, Canada and the United States.
We will continue to accept signatures for approximately a week after publication. 

The list of signatories will be regularly updated. 

To add your name to the list, please send your name and affiliation to open.letter.am.brady@gmail.com.

Open letter on harassment campaign against Anne-Marie Brady

We, the undersigned concerned scholars and others with an interest in China, have been alarmed and appalled by the recent wave of intimidation directed against our colleague, Professor Anne-Marie Brady, in apparent retaliation for her scholarly research on contemporary China.
Anne-Marie Brady, a scholar of Chinese politics affiliated with the University of Canterbury, has investigated the external propaganda and political influence mechanisms employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in New Zealand and beyond. 

Her 2017 paper Magic Weapons, based on extensive Chinese and English-language sources and previous scholarship on the PRC political system, described the CCP’s use of United Front tactics to control extra-Party forces, intensified at home and abroad under current CCP secretary general Xi Jinping. 

Professor Brady has accompanied her research with specific policy recommendations on how the New Zealand government can deal with the CCP’s political influence operations. 

These policy recommendations have attracted wide interest far beyond New Zealand.
Since the publication of her work on global United Front work, Brady’s home and office have been subjected to burglaries, during which no valuable items other than electronic devices were stolen. Most recently, her car was found to have been tampered with in ways consistent with intentional sabotage. 

According to media reports, Interpol and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS) are involved in the investigation. 

In China, academics were interrogated by Ministry of State Security agents after their institutions hosted Brady. 

Brady has also been personally attacked in media under the direction of the CCP, both in the PRC and in New Zealand. 

Taken together, these circumstances make it likely that this harassment campaign constitutes a response to her research on the CCP’s influence, and an attempt to intimidate her into silence.
Despite the evidence of CCP interference provided in Brady’s research, of which the harassment campaign appears to be a further example, the New Zealand government has been slow to take action and failed to acknowledge that a problem exists. 

Professor Brady’s repeated requests for additional SIS and police protection have been ignored for four months.
Far from unique to New Zealand, the CCP’s global United Front tactics and other political influence operations have been documented in other locations, in Europe, Oceania, Asia and the Americas. Small nations are especially vulnerable to the PRC Party-state’s exploitation of asymmetries in economic power and relevant expertise to advance its political interests. 

Whether within or without the limits of the law of their target countries, these activities have considerable effects on their societies and merit evidence-based research and the attention of politicians and the media. 

The harassment campaign against Brady risks having a chilling effect on scholarly inquiry, allowing the CCP to interfere in the politics of our societies unfettered by informed scrutiny.
We urge the New Zealand authorities to grant Professor Brady the necessary protection to allow her to continue her research, sending a clear signal to fellow researchers that independent inquiry can be protected in democratic societies and conducted without fear of retribution.
We join other voices in support of Professor Brady, which have included statements by a New Zealand Chinese community organisation, some of her Canterbury University colleagues, New Zealand academics and two Australian Sinologists, as well as many others on social media.
We further hope decision makers and the public at large, in New Zealand and elsewhere, will engage with evidence-based research on the CCP’s United Front tactics, such as Brady’s Magic Weapons, and give due consideration to policy advice emanating from such research.

Signatories (169) as of 6pm, 5 Dec 2018 (CET)

Martin Hála, Charles University and Sinopsis.cz
Jichang Lulu, independent researcher
Filip Jirouš, Sinopsis.cz
Kateřina Procházková, Sinopsis.cz
Anna Zádrapová, Sinopsis.cz
Hernán Alberro, CADAL
Jamil Anderlini, journalist
Nathan Attrill, PhD Candidate, Australian National University
Ross Babbage, Chief Executive Officer, Strategic Forum
David L. Bandurski, Co-Director, China Media Project
Michael Barr, FAHA, Flinders University
Michael Beckley, professor, Tufts University
Jean-Philippe Béja, Research Professor Emeritus, CNRS
Bill Bishop
Joseph Bosco, former China Country Director, Office of the Secretary of Defense
Julia Bowie, Center for Advanced China Research
Hal Brands, Johns Hopkins SAIS
Sarah M Brooks, International Service for Human Rights
Dr. Douglas Brown, John Abbott College, Sainte Anne de Bellevue, Quebec
Charles Burton, Brock University
Reinhard Bütikofer MEP, Bündnis90/Die Grünen
Darren Byler, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington
Harald Bøckman, Visiting Senior Fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science / University of Oslo
Dag Inge Bøe, social anthropologist
Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Professor of Political Science, Hong Kong Baptist University
Alan Cantos, physical oceanographer and Director of the Spanish Tibet Support Committee (CAT)
Yaxue Cao, China Change
Kevin Carrico, Macquarie University
Danielle Cave, Deputy Head, International Cyber Policy Centre, The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and PhD Scholar, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, ANU
Lenka Cavojská, sinologist
Anita Chan (Prof.), Co-editor, The China Journal, Australian National University
Alvin Y.H. Cheung, Affiliated Scholar, US-Asia Law Institute, NYU School of Law
Jocelyn Chey, University of Sydney
Tarun Chhabra, policy analyst
Donald Clarke, Professor of Law and David A. Weaver Research Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School
Professor Jerome A. Cohen, NYU Law School
J Michael Cole, China Policy Institute (U Nott), Research Associate CEFC
Gabriel Collins, Rice University
Anders Corr, Corr Analytics
Demetrius Cox, independent researcher
Peter Dahlin, Director of Safeguard Defenders
June Teufel Dreyer, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Miami
Mathieu Duchâtel, Deputy Director, Senior Fellow, Asia and China Programme, European Council on Foreign Relations
Ryan Dunch, Professor, History and Classics, Director, Program in Religious Studies, University of Alberta
Ian Easton, Research Fellow, Project 2049 Institute
Elizabeth C. Economy, Council on Foreign Relations
Charles Edel, United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney
Eric Edelman, Johns Hopkins SAIS
Kingsley Edney, University of Leeds
Johan Elverskog, Southern Methodist University
José Elías Esteve Moltó, Universitat de València
Feng Chongyi, University of Technology Sydney
Magnus Fiskesjö, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University
John Fitzgerald, Swinburne University of Technology
Martin Flaherty, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
Lindsey Ford, Director for Political-Security Affairs, Asia Society Policy Institute
Ivan Franceschini, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and Australian National University
Vanessa Frangville, Université libre de Bruxelles
Aaron Friedberg, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University
Edward Friedman, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Dr Andreas Fulda, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham
Kateřina Gajdošová, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Charles University
Ursula Gauthier, grand reporter, L’Obs
David Gitter, Center For Advanced China Research
Louisa Greve, Uyghur Human Rights Project
Gerry Groot, University of Adelaide
A.Tom Grunfeld, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus
Guo Shan-yu, Charles University
Rosemary Haddon, (formerly) Massey University
Ian Hall, Professor of International Relations, Griffith University
Terry Halliday, Research Professor, American Bar Foundation, Honorary Professor, School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australian National University, Adjunct Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University
Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University, Canberra
Mette Halskov Hansen, University of Oslo
Mark Harrison, University of Tasmania
Jonathan Hassid, Iowa State University
Laurens Hemminga, City University of Hong Kong / Leiden University
Anne Henochowicz, Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel
Daniel Herman, former minister of culture, KDU-ČSL
Samantha Hoffman, analyst
Marie Holzman, Solidarité Chine, Paris
Leta Hong Fincher, independent sociologist
Charles Horner, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
Fraser Howie, author and independent China analyst
Carlos Iglesias, human rights lawyer
J. Bruce Jacobs, Emeritus Professor of Asian Languages and Studies, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University
Jakub Janda, Executive Director, Head of Kremlin Watch Program, European Values Think-tank
Rodney Jones, Wigram Capital Advisors (HK)
Alex Joske, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Elsa B. Kania, Harvard University
Karina Kapounová, sinologist, Charles University, Prague
Thierry Kellner, Université libre de Bruxelles
Jeffrey C. Kinkley, Portland State University
Ondřej Klimeš, Czech Academy of Sciences
František Kopřiva, MP, Czech Pirate Party
Zuzana Košková, University of Freiburg
Adam Kozieł, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights
Dr Mei-fen Kuo, The University of Queensland
Petr Kutílek, lecturer in transitional politics, Prague
Michael Laha, Program Officer at Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations
Françoise Lauwaert, Université libre de Bruxelles
Professor John Lee, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
James Leibold, La Trobe University
Steve Levine, Department of History, University of Montana, USA
Filip Lexa, Sinologist and Indonesia expert, Charles University, Prague
Jon R. Lindsay, Assistant Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto
Perry Link, Princeton University
Olga Lomová, Charles University
Nicholas Loubere, Lund University
Julia Lovell, Birkbeck College, University of London
Maree Ma, Vision Times Media Corporation (Australia)
T M McClellan, PhD, Independent scholar, formerly Senior Lecturer (Chinese) in The University of Edinburgh
Barrett L. McCormick, Professor, Marquette University
Kevin McCready, former AusAID official, translator
Paul Macgregor, historian and heritage consultant, Victoria, Australia
Richard McGregor, Lowy Institute
Anne McLaren, Professor, Chinese Studies, FAHA, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne
Thomas G. Mahnken, Johns Hopkins SAIS
Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Pennsylvania
Maurizio Marinelli, University of Sussex
Peter Mattis, Research Fellow, China Studies, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
Rory Medcalf, Australian National University
Jonathan Mirsky, historian of China, former journalist in China and Tibet
Michelle S. Mood, Political Science and Asian Studies, Kenyon College
Zbyněk Mucha, indologist and tibetologist, Charles University
Luisetta Mudie, translator
Ian Mukherjee, independent analyst
Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University
Adam Ni, Visiting Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University
Cassy O’Connor MP, Tasmanian Greens Leader
Mareike Ohlberg
Max Oidtmann, Georgetown University
Jojje Olsson, journalist and author
Charlie Parton, Associate Fellow, RUSI
Gaia Perini, University of Bologna
Eva Pils, Professor of Law, King’s College London
Sophie Richardson, PhD, China Director, Human Rights Watch
Sean Roberts, The George Washington University
Kaz Ross, School of Humanities, University of Tasmania
Fergus Ryan, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Gabriel Salvia, Director General, CADAL
David Schak, Adjunct Associate Professor, Griffith Asia Institute
Matt Schrader, editor, Jamestown Foundation China Brief
Mark Selden, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, State University of New York at Binghamton
James D. Seymour, Columbia University
Victor Shih, associate professor, UC San Diego
Susan L. Shirk, Research Professor and Chair, 21st Century China Center, School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC-San Diego
Jan Sládek, Charles University Faculty of Arts, Department of Sociology, vice-dean for information resources
Prof. Martin Slobodník, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia
Angela Stanzel, Senior Policy Fellow, Institut Montaigne
Janice Gross Stein, University of Toronto
Marina Svensson, Lund University
Josef Šlerka, Head of New Media Studies Department at Charles University
Hiroki Takeuchi, Southern Methodist University
Teng Biao, US-Asia Law Institute, New York University
Martin Thorley, University of Nottingham
Alan Tidwell, Director, Center for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Rory Truex, Princeton University
Glenn Tiffert, Hoover Institution
Aki Tonami, University of Tsukuba
Steve Tsang, Professor of Chinese Studies, SOAS University of London
Professor Jonathan Unger, Political & Social Change Department, Australian National University
Professor Arthur Waldron, University of Pennsylvania
Gerrit van der Wees, George Mason University
Andréa Worden, independent researcher
David Curtis Wright, University of Calgary
Teresa Wright, Department of Political Science, California State University
Michael Yahuda, Emeritus Professor, LSE, Visiting Scholar, Sigur Center for Asia Studies, The Elliott School, George Washington University
Wai Ling Yeung, Western Australia Department of Education
Lukáš Zádrapa, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Charles University Prague

'My hair turned white': report lifts lid on China's forced confessions

Those coerced into confessing are dressed by police, handed a script and given directions on how to deliver lines
The Guardian

 Chinese courts have a conviction rate over 99% and cases rely heavily on confessions.

China must stop airing forced confessions from human rights activists, a campaign group has said in a report that details how detainees are coerced into delivering scripted remarks.
There have been at least 45 forced televised confessions in China since 2013, according to the report from Safeguard Defenders, a human rights NGO in Asia. 

The group called on the international community to put pressure on the Chinese government to end the practice and recommended imposing sanctions on executives at China’s state broadcaster, including asset freezes and travel bans.
Those coerced into confessing describe being dressed by police and handed a script they are required to memorise, and even being given directions on how to deliver certain lines or cry on cue, the report says. 

One person described enduring seven hours of recording for a television piece that ultimately amounted to several minutes. 

Others reported police ordering retakes of confessions they were unhappy with.
Some occur in jailhouse settings, with the accused wearing an orange prison vest and sometimes seated behind bars, while others are made to look more neutral. 

The confessions are almost always aired before a formal conviction, violating Chinese law asserting a presumption of innocence.
Chinese courts have a conviction rate over 99% and cases rely heavily on confessions. 

Five of the 37 people described in the report who have confessed on Chinese television have since publicly retracted their confessions.
Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 there has been a wholesale crackdown on civil society and dissent, leading to hundreds of arrests targeting human rights activists and the lawyers that defend them. 

The practice of forced confessions was especially prominent during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, a decade of political upheaval during which “counter-revolutionaries” were paraded through the streets and forced to confess to their alleged crimes.
“[The police] threatened that if I did not cooperate with them they would sentence me to jail time, I’d lose my job, my family would leave me and I’d lose my reputation for the rest of my life,” said one person quoted in the report, identified only as Li. 

“I was only 39 years old, my hair turned white with the enormous pressure and torture of it all.”

Peter Dahlin, a former China-based NGO worker from Sweden, was forced to say he had violated Chinese law in a televised confession in 2016. 

He said the purpose, especially when foreigners were involved, was to shape the conversation from the beginning and preempt any international criticism.
“This goes to show this is not done simply by police for murky propaganda purposes but directly by the state as a part of foreign policy,” he said.
Confessions by a range of suspects have been aired on China Central Television, the nation’s official broadcaster, including those by a British corporate investigator, a Chinese-born Swedish book publisher and dozens of Chinese activists who agitated for change.
Gui Minhai, the bookseller, has been paraded in front of media outlets on three separate occasions. He went missing from his apartment in a Thai resort town in late 2015 only to reappear months later in a Chinese jail, confessing to a traffic incident from 2003.
“These ‘confessions’ are about the crushing of dissent wherever it may arise,” David Bandurski, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project, said in a conversation on the website China File last year. 

“The supposed crimes are of middling importance relative to the act of submission itself, the knuckling under to authority. In a word, then, this is political bullying.
“As Xi Jinping trumpets the principle of rule of law, these clearly forced admissions telegraph exactly the opposite message.”

Rogue Nation: The disappeared

Accounts from inside China's secret prisons
By Chieu Luu and Matt Rivers

Sui Muqing says he was forced to stay awake while he was interrogated for more than four days.
Chen Taihe describes being held in a jail cell so crowded he couldn't relieve himself.
And Peter Dahlin was left so traumatized by his experience, he slept with a knife next to his bed.
Three men, in three different parts of China.

They didn't know each other, but all had one thing in common: They advocated for human rights and became caught up in what activists say is the Chinese government's brutal crackdown on dissent.
Xi Jinping's wide-reaching sweep on perceived threats to both his rule and the Chinese Communist Party has led to the arrests of dozens of activists, bloggers, feminists, artists and lawyers.
The men, who CNN spoke to in detail over the course of the last 12 months, describe being forcibly taken from their homes, detained for weeks, sometimes months, in secret prisons, denied communication with family and legal representation, strong-armed into making videotaped confessions, and ultimately released without being convicted of a single crime.
Sui, Chen and Dahlin all say they were explicitly told not to talk about what happened to them, but have decided to speak out anyway. 

They say they want to shed light on the lengths to which China's government will go to silence anyone it deems a threat.
CNN reached out to the Chinese government for comment on each of the cases in this story, but received no response. 

Beijing has said regularly in the past that it does not torture prisoners and maintains these lawyers and activists are criminals dealt with under the law.

The 709 crackdown
While being a human rights lawyer has never been an easy path in Communist China, forced disappearances of lawyers were rare before 2015.
But on July 9 of that year, prominent Beijing rights lawyer Wang Yu disappeared, along with her husband, also a lawyer, and their teenage son.
The following day, police raided Wang's law firm and detained seven of her colleagues. 

Seven other rights lawyers were also detained or reported missing, according to the Hong-Kong based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, which has meticulously documented the cases. It became known as the "709 crackdown" -- a reference to the date the first arrests occurred.
Sui was among them. 

He'd earlier in the day spoken to two foreign media outlets to raise concern about Wang's disappearance.
That night, a security guard called up to Sui's apartment and said his car had been scratched in an accident and when he stepped outside, a group of police quickly whisked him away, said Sui. 

He wasn't seen again for nearly five months.

From left to right: Sui Minqing, Peter Dahlin and Chen Taihe.

Two days later, on July 12, the same thing happened to Chen. 

He said police asked him to come down from his apartment to answer a few questions. 

"I intentionally left my cell phone upstairs in my apartment because I thought I'd be back in a few minutes." 

He didn't return for six weeks.
During a period of less than a week, at least 146 lawyers and their families were detained in a nationwide swoop.
The roots of the crackdown on lawyers can be traced back to an editorial in the overseas edition of state-run People's Daily in July 2012, which warned the United States would use five categories of people to destabilize the Communist Party's near seven-decade rule. 

Rights advocates and lawyers were at the top of the list.
Dahlin, a Swedish national who co-founded a Beijing-based NGO that provided legal aid and training to Chinese lawyers, wasn't caught up in the first wave of detentions, and assumed his status as a foreigner might offer him some protection.
In early January 2016, however, he got tipped off authorities might be after him. 

He was about to depart for Beijing airport when 20 police officers turned up at his apartment.
They detained him and his girlfriend and they ransacked his home, he says, seizing computers and documents.
Dahlin says he was accused of masterminding a plan to smuggle the son of Wang Yu, the first lawyer to be detained in the swoop, into Myanmar, in an effort to evade authorities in October 2015.
He said investigators realized early on he had nothing to do with it, but instead of letting him go, quickly turned their attention to his NGO -- Chinese Urgent Action Working Group -- pressing him to give up information about his colleagues and other activists his group worked with.
Authorities said that Dahlin worked for an illegal organization that sponsored activities that jeopardized China's national security. 

The NGO said it "undertakes rapid response assistance for rights defenders in need."
By October 2017, some 321 lawyers, rights activists, their family members and staff had been caught up in the 709 crackdown.

How lawyers disappear

A key tool in the crackdown has been a relatively new form of detention. 

In 2012, China introduced "residential surveillance at a designated location" (RSDL) into the Criminal Procedural Law.
It appeared to legalize a long-used practice of "black jails" -- a means of temporarily detaining people outside the Chinese legal system who could not be immediately charged with a crime.
The government denied black jails existed in 2009. 

But in 2011 Chinese state media reported on a campaign by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau to crack down on them.
The amended law says residential surveillance shouldn't exceed six months but requires detainees' families be notified within 24 hours, unless they can't be reached, and guarantees all suspects the right to a lawyer, with whom a meeting should be granted within 48 hours of a request.
The new system gives arbitrary detention a legal gloss and normalizes enforced disappearances. 

Earlier this year, 11 countries called on China to end the practice and investigate reports of torture against human rights lawyers. 

The UN High Commission on Human Rights has also called on China to halt the detention of lawyers.

Chen Taihe, a blogger, was detained in Guilin. He now lives in the US.

Although they were held at opposite ends of the country, Sui, Chen and Dahlin all describe similar conditions: Sparsely furnished rooms with black-out curtains on the windows and fluorescent lights kept on 24-hours a day.
They say they slept on a single bed, and were not allowed any reading or writing materials. 

Guards were always in the room watching their every move, even when they used the bathroom.
"There's nothing to look at except some very beige-looking suicide padding on the wall," said Dahlin.
He described being so bored he almost looked forward to the daily interrogations, "because at least you're taken out to another room ... and have some kind of interaction with people."
The interrogators used methods which Dahlin said reminded him of "bad American movies."
"They would have lots of people rush into your cell at night surrounding your bed just trying to scare you," he said.

Peter Dahlin, a Swedish national, was detained in China on January 4, 2016 and held for three weeks.

Just months earlier, Sui says he was held at a police training facility in Guangzhou, the free-wheeling hub of China's manufacturing heartland where he worked as a human rights lawyer defending a number of high-profile activists.
He says interrogators accused him of inciting subversion and pressed him to give them details ranging from his personal life and finances, to his work, clients, and all of his contacts.
Initially he refused to answer the questions, but his resistance only made his interrogators push harder. 

"They wouldn't let me sleep for four days and nights. By the fifth day, I felt like I was going to die," he said.
Sui said it was the sleep deprivation plus threats of torture which ultimately broke his will and made him cooperate. 

He said investigators threatened to shackle his hands, hang him from the ceiling and shine a flashlight directly into his eyes.
"I knew someone who had a heart attack due to deprivation of sleep in jail, so I was a bit frightened my life could be at risk if I continued to fight back," he said.

Sui Muqing, a lawyer, was detained from July 10, 2015 until January 6, 2016.

Chen, a professor who advocated for a US-style jury system in China on his blog, was first accused of "picking quarrels and provoking troubles," -- a vague charge often used by Chinese authorities that can carry a 10-year prison sentence. 

He told CNN he refused to admit any wrongdoing during a 20-hour interrogation, but then found himself sharing a jail cell with inmates accused of crimes ranging from petty theft to murder.
"The cell was so crammed I had to ask other prisoners to make room so I could urinate and defecate," he said. 

"I didn't have a spoon or chopsticks to eat with. We'd get one scoop of rice and would have to eat it with our hands."

After a month, Chen said he was told to collect his belongings. 

He thought he was going home -- but instead was driven to what appeared to be an abandoned hotel and held for another 10 days.
Earlier this year, CNN visited the nondescript building where Chen said he was held in Guilin, a southern city famed for its stunning landscape of karst mountains. 

Signs posted around the area in Chinese and English marked it as military property, but it otherwise appeared open and accessible.
Local officials denied that the building was used as a secret detention center.

The building in Guilin where Chen Taihe was held.

'You have to confess'
The rights activists held captive weren't just concerned about their own well being. 

Their loved ones were also threatened.
Dahlin's interrogators made it clear that they'd keep his girlfriend, a Chinese national, in custody for as long as it took to resolve his case.
"She was taken hostage just to put pressure on me," he said. 

Dahlin asked about his girlfriend every day but got limited answers.
"They said she was being treated quite well. That she was being given yoghurt and fruit and things like that. She was allowed to make a few drawings and do yoga in her room," he said. 

"They knew she had nothing to give them."
Finally, after more than three weeks, Dahlin was told he was going to be released -- but he had to do one thing: confess on camera.
He said he knew what authorities were really going to do with it. 

But wanting to speed up his release -- and that of his girlfriend -- Dahlin agreed to play his part.

Dahlin 'confesses' on state TV

He was taken into a room where a woman from state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) was sitting with a cameraman. 

Dahlin was handed a piece of paper with the questions that she would ask and the answers he would give.
"I have caused harm to the Chinese government. I have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people. I apologize sincerely for this," Dahlin said in the confession broadcast nationwide and splashed across state-run newspapers.
Immediately after its broadcast activists denounced it as a forced confession -- one of many that have been shown on CCTV in the years since Xi came to power.
Sui and Chen said they had to make similar "confessions." 

All three men now maintain their innocence, but they said they had no choice but to do as authorities wanted.
Sui says he admitted to charges of inciting subversion. 

Chen told CNN he confessed to charges of picking quarrels and provoking troubles, inciting subversion and embezzlement.
"You have to confess," Chen said. 

"Otherwise they won't let you go."

No end in sight
The crackdown on lawyers is still taking place.
On Tuesday, a court in Changsha, central China sentenced human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong to two years in prison after convicting him of inciting subversion against the state.
In August, he had confessed in a trial that was streamed live online and watched by his wife Jin Bianling in California.
"He used to tell me, if I ever admit to a crime like this, it means I've been tortured," Jin said.
Jiang was a prominent human rights lawyer who had represented some of his colleagues targeted in the 709 crackdown, and was an outspoken critic of the government. 

He disappeared in November 2016, en route to catching a train from the central city of Changsha to Beijing. 

Months went by before the authorities confirmed he had been detained.
"Please give me another chance to be a human being ... and to make up for my wrongdoings," Jiang told a panel of three judges at his August trial.
Albert Ho, a Hong Kong-based activist with the China Human Rights Lawyer Concern Group, said Jiang, like other lawyers his group has spoken to, likely admitted to the charges in order to live to fight another day.
"Only an idiot would believe that he is truly speaking from his heart," Ho said.

Sleeping with a knife
Six days after his "confession" was broadcast on CCTV, Dahlin was released and expelled from China. 

His girlfriend was also released without charge.
Dahlin is now based in Thailand, but has trouble forgetting his time in detention.
"Early on it was quite extreme. Every little noise at night would wake me up. I'd sleep with a knife next to my bed, ready to stab the first Chinese person who comes into my gate," he said.

Wang Yu poses during an interview in Hong Kong on March 20, 2014.

Wang Yu, the first lawyer detained in the 709 crackdown, was charged with subversion, while her husband was charged with inciting subversion. 

They were both released on bail after more than a year in custody, after Wang's taped confession was aired on CCTV.
In it, Wang renounced her legal work and blamed "foreign forces" for using her law firm to undermine and discredit the government. 

Their son, who was detained along with them, was released soon afterward, but his movements have been heavily restricted.
Authorities never aired Chen's statement. 

He was released a day after recording it and the charges against him were dropped.
"I have no criminal record, but they can still use the video to discredit me," he said.
Chen and his family now live in US, where he's a visiting scholar at the University of California's Hastings Law School and studies the US jury system. 

He said he won't return to China until it becomes more democratic.
Sui was released on bail after his "confession," which was also never broadcast. 

He continues to practice law in Guangzhou, but said his movements have been restricted and fears the worst may still be yet to come.
"It's increasingly difficult to maintain a harmonious society through brainwashing," Sui said.
"The only resort left is violence. For anyone who's not submissive, a brutal crackdown is on the way."

Harassment and house arrest in China as Trump has 'beyond terrific' time

Human rights defenders and their families placed under heavy surveillance by Xi Jinping’s agents as US president is feted
By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Li Wenzu, wife of lawyer Wang Quanzhang, during a protest in Beijing against the detention of human rights defenders. 

On day one of Donald Trump’s “state visit-plus” to China he was treated to a tour of the Forbidden City, a night at the opera and an intimate dinner with Xi Jinping. 

“Beyond terrific,” he boasted.

Trump's freak show

Li Wenzu got a loud knock at the door from a man claiming to represent the domestic security agency tasked with suppressing political dissent. 

“The US president is in town,” the 32-year-old mother-of-one says she was informed by the agent. “Do not go anywhere … you must cooperate with our work.”
Li is the wife of Wang Quanzhang, a crusading human rights lawyer whom she has not seen since the summer of 2015 when he was spirited into secret detention during a roundup of attorneys and activists known as Xi’s “war on law”.
With China’s leader out to impress his American guest, Li and dissidents like her say they have been placed under house arrest or heavy surveillance in a bid to stop them spoiling the show.
“[The authorities] are afraid of us meeting with foreign leaders, of our stories being heard by people all over the world, and of the truth being uncovered,” she said by phone on Thursday morning as Xi rolled out the red carpet for Trump in Tiananmen Square.
After the knock on her door at about 7am on Wednesday, Li said about a dozen plainclothes agents had camped outside her flat in west Beijing.

A photograph taken by Li Wenzu after plainclothes Chinese security agents were posted outside her flat.

When she tried to go out with her young son, she claimed one of the group “pushed me with his body and prevented us from going”.
“Shame on him!” Li said. 

“Just think about it, I don’t have the right to go anywhere in the country. It is ridiculous. I felt so powerless.”
Beijing-based activist He Depu told Radio Free Asia, a US-backed news website, other activists were also feeling the pinch because of Trump’s arrival: “All political dissidents are under surveillance right now.”

Peter Dahlin, a Swedish human rights activist who was expelled from China last year after 23 days in secret detention, said authorities saw Li – who has campaigned relentlessly on behalf of her imprisoned husband -- as a “constant thorn in their side”. 

He called her treatment “unusual even for China” and symptomatic of a wider breakdown in the rule of law under Xi.
Dahlin, a friend of Li’s husband, said Wang had spent so long in secret detention that “at one point people were seriously wondering if he was even alive any more”. 

He is now thought to be behind bars in the northern city of Tianjin.
Trump has enraged human rights activists by courting China’s authoritarian leader despite what they call the government’s worst crackdown in decades. 

Trump has called Xi a friend and recently praised his “extraordinary elevation” and “great political victory” after he was anointed China’s most powerful leader since Mao.
On Wednesday, Republican senator Marco Rubio rejected that description: “Xi’s further consolidation of power, in a one-party communist state, was not a political victory. It was a tragedy for human rights advocates, reformers and thousands of political prisoners,” he tweeted.
Li Wenzu, who has not seen her husband since he was seized, said: “I hope [Trump] can show concern for human rights issues in China … He should think carefully about dealing with a country that does not care about human rights, and violates the law.
“It’s just like when we are making friends, we must first look at character of the person [we are befriending].” 

Rogue Nation

China Wields Its "Laws" to Silence Critics From Abroad
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and CHRIS HORTON

Lee Ming-cheh, second from left, an activist from Taiwan, in court in the Chinese city of Yueyang, Hunan Province, last week. The case against Mr. Lee punctuates what critics warn are China’s efforts to stifle what it perceives as threats from overseas. 

BEIJING — On the morning he disappeared, the activist Lee Ming-cheh crossed from Macau into mainland China to meet with democracy advocates.
It was 177 days later when he reappeared in public, standing in the dock of a courtroom in central China last week, confessing to a conspiracy to subvert the Communist Party by circulating criticism on social media.
The circumstances surrounding Mr. Lee’s detainment remain murky, but what has made the case stand out from the many that the Chinese government brings against its critics is that Mr. Lee is not a citizen of China, but rather of Taiwan, the self-governing island over which Beijing claims sovereignty.
The proceedings against Mr. Lee, who is expected to be sentenced as soon as this week, punctuated what critics have warned are China’s brazen efforts to extend the reach of its security forces to stifle what it perceives as threats to its power emanating from overseas.
In recent months alone, China has sought the extradition of ethnic Uighur students studying overseas in Egypt and carried out the cinematic seizure of a billionaire from a Hong Kong hotel in violation of an agreement that allows the former British colony to run its own affairs. 

The billionaire, Xiao Jianhua, now appears to be a material witness in another politically tinged investigation against the Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda.

China abruptly surfaced charges of "rape" against yet another billionaire, Guo Wengui, after he sought political asylum in the United States, where he has been making sensational accusations about the Communist Party’s leadership. 

Mr. Guo’s case could become a major test for the Trump administration’s relations with Beijing at a time of tensions over North Korea and trade.

The Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui has sought political asylum in the United States.

“China has been extending its clampdown — its choking of civil society — throughout the world, and often it is attempting this through official channels such as the U.N. or Interpol,” said Michael Caster, a rights campaigner who was a co-founder of the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group. “Unfortunately, they’re very adept at doing it.”
The Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, which provided seminars for lawyers and legal aid for defendants in China, folded last year after the country’s powerful Ministry of State Security arrested and held Mr. Caster’s colleague, Peter Dahlin, a Swedish citizen, for 23 days.
Mr. Caster noted that Interpol’s president, Meng Hongwei, is a veteran of China’s state security apparatus. 

Human Rights Watch recently reported that China was blocking the work of United Nations agencies investigating rights issues and preventing critics from testifying at hearings, including in one case the leader of the World Uyghur Congress, Dolkun Isa.
China’s economic clout has meant that few countries are willing to do much to challenge its extraterritorial legal maneuvers. 

Some have even gone along.
And countries as varied as Armenia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Kenya, Spain and Vietnam have all extradited to China scores of people accused in a spate of telephone swindles targeting Chinese citizens, even though the suspects are, like Mr. Lee, citizens of Taiwan.
“Treating Lee Ming-cheh as a mainland Chinese marks a major watershed,” said Hsiao I-Min, a lawyer at the Judicial Reform Foundation in Taiwan, who accompanied Mr. Lee’s wife from Taiwan to attend the trial.

Peter Dahlin, a Swedish citizen, was arrested in China and held for 23 days last year.

Mr. Lee’s case has added new strain in relations with Taiwan, which have soured since the election last year of a new president, Tsai Ing-wen. 

China has cut off official communications with Ms. Tsai’s government over her refusal to voice support for what Beijing calls the “1992 consensus,” which holds that the mainland and Taiwan are both part of the same China but leaves each side to interpret what that means.
In response to Mr. Lee’s legal odyssey, Ms. Tsai’s government has been relatively muted. 

“Our consistent position on this case is that we will do everything in our power to ensure his safe return while protecting the dignity of the nation,” said a spokesman for the presidential administration, Alex Huang.
China and Taiwan had in recent years cooperated on criminal investigations under a protocol that required each to notify the other in cases involving the arrests of its citizens. 

The Chinese government has recently abandoned such diplomatic niceties, officials in Taiwan say.
Taiwan’s government was notified of Mr. Lee’s arrest only when the public was — 10 days after his detainment in March near Macau, the former Portuguese colony that, like Hong Kong, is a special administrative region of China with its own legal system.
Mr. Lee, 42, assumed enormous risk to make contact with rights campaigners inside China. 

A manager at Wenshan Community College in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, Mr. Lee volunteered for a rights organization called Covenants Watch and often traveled to the mainland.
Mr. Lee’s wife, Lee Ching-yu, learned his case had come to a head when a state-appointed lawyer contacted her this month. 

She only found out about his court appearance last week in Yueyang, in the southern province of Hunan, from news reports that circulated two days later, according to Patrick Poon, a researcher at Amnesty International.

Lee Ching-yu, the wife of Mr. Lee, departing for her husband’s trial in China from an airport in Taipei, Taiwan, this month. 

According to excerpts released by the Yueyang Intermediate People’s Court, Mr. Lee entered a guilty plea. 

He appeared with a Chinese co-defendant, Peng Yuhua, and together they were accused of trying to organize protests using the social media platforms WeChat and QQ, as well as Facebook, which is banned here.
Mr. Lee told the court that watching Chinese state television during his prolonged detention convinced him that he had been deceived by Taiwan’s free news media and was wrong about China’s political system. 

“These incorrect thoughts led me to criminal behavior,” he said.
Mr. Hsiao, the lawyer from Taiwan, said none of Mr. Lee’s acquaintances had heard of the co-defendant. 

Mr. Peng testified that together they had established chat groups online and formed a front organization, the Plum Blossom Company, with the aim of fomenting change. 

Mr. Hsiao said that no such company existed.
“He was a fake,” Mr. Hsiao said of Mr. Peng. 

“This guy does not really exist. He was playing a role.”
Ms. Lee, too, denounced her husband’s trial as a farce. 

“Today the world and I together witnessed political theater, as well as the differences between the core beliefs of Taiwan and China,” she said at her hotel in Yueyang, adding that the “norms of expression in Taiwan are tantamount to armed rebellion in China.”
Mr. Lee’s case has echoes of the fate of five booksellers in Hong Kong, four of whom who were spirited out of the semiautonomous city in the fall of 2015 after publishing gossipy material about Chinese political intrigues, which, while legal in Hong Kong, is not in China.
One bookseller, Lee Bo, is a British citizen. 

Another, Gui Minhai, is a naturalized Swedish citizen; he vanished from his seaside apartment in Pattaya, Thailand, in October 2015 and returned to China in a manner that has not been fully explained. 

He appeared on state television in January 2016 and said he had voluntarily returned to face punishment for a fatal car accident in 2003. 

He remains in prison.
“What happened to my father is a much larger issue,” Mr. Gui’s daughter, Angela Gui, who has been campaigning for his release, wrote in an email. 

“It shows that foreign citizens aren’t safe from Chinese state security, even when they are outside China’s borders. I find it strange that governments aren’t more worried about China’s new self-proclaimed role as world police.”

Chinese Paranoia

China releases new ad campaign offering massive cash reward to rat out international spies
By Matt Young and AFP

Chinese Government issued video shows citizens how they can catch spies

IN A sign of rising paranoia, city officials in China have urged the public to “slowly construct an iron Great Wall in combating evil and guarding against spies”.
Budding Chinese sleuths could start stalking foreigners as suspected spies in Beijing after authorities offered huge cash bonanzas for information on overseas agents, according to China’s Xinhua news agency.
It comes as the Beijing National Security Bureau posted an animated “how-to” video on how to spot a spy and what to do should you see one in action.
“Steal state secrets with me and make a fortune by selling them abroad!” a bearded foreigner with a robber’s mask tells a little boy.
“Uncle policeman, he’s the one!” the boy tells an officer.
The boy receives a lollipop from the policeman, but the video says whistleblowers will receive much more than just a sweet.
The video finished with a line that nice guys don’t have to finish last.

“Foreign intelligence organs and other hostile forces have also seized the opportunity to sabotage our country through political infiltration, division and subversion, stealing secrets and collusion,” the Beijing Daily newspaper reported.
“There are some people out of personal interests, selling national interests, to foreign intelligence agencies to take advantage of intelligence.”
Members of the public can report suspected espionage through a special hotline, by mail or in person and will be rewarded with up to 500,000 yuan ($72,460) in compensation if their intelligence is deemed useful.
Beijing “is the first choice among foreign spy agencies and others who are fiercely carrying out infiltration, subversion, division, destruction and theft,” according to authorities.
The average annual wage in Beijing in 2015 was 85,000 yuan ($12,300), according to the most recent data available from the city government.
Some Chinese have joked on social media that they would only have to catch two spies a year over a five-year period to buy a house. 

Others, sceptical of the campaign, said, “We should clean up corrupt officials first”.
“Citizens play an important role in spy investigations,” said a statement from the city’s security bureau, in the latest sign of concern about foreign agents in the capital.
The new incentives for whistleblowers will be implemented ahead of China’s second annual National Security Education Day on April 15.
Sources can choose to remain anonymous and request police protection for themselves and their relatives.
Those who deliberately provide false information will be punished, the security bureau said.
The Beijing Morning Post wrote on Monday that the “extensive mobilisation of the masses” will contribute to the construction of an “anti-spy steel Great Wall.”
But one expert claims the campaign could indiscriminately target foreigners. 

Li Fan, founder of the private think tank World and China Institute told the Washington Post, “if you take a photo on the street, somebody will report you as a hostile foreign spy. People will be more cautious to talk to foreign media.”
Cartoon posters began appearing in Beijing public offices last year warning Chinese women against falling for the romantic wiles of foreign men with undercover motives.
A 16-panel poster titled Dangerous Love showed a blossoming relationship between a Chinese government worker named Xiao Li and a visiting scholar, “David”.

A poster warning against foreign spies is displayed in an alleyway in Beijing, China, Wednesday, April 20, 2016. 

Friend: A foreign friend has organised a gathering tonight ... You’re always trying to increase your foreign language level, why don’t you go with me? Xiao Li: OK.

Their thwarted happy ending takes the form of a visit to the police station when the pair is arrested after Xiao Li gives David secret internal documents from her government workplace.
The newspaper reported that a fisherman in eastern Jiangsu province received a “heavy” reward after notifying the authorities of a suspicious device in the water bearing a “foreign language.” 

The device was being used to collect data for a foreign party, according to the Beijing Morning Post.
The Chinese government often declares threats from “hostile foreign forces” as a justification for censorship and crackdowns on civil society.
Peter Dahlin, a Swedish human rights activist operating out of Beijing, was detained for 23 days and then expelled from the country in January 2016 for allegedly posing a threat to national security.
Mr Dahlin’s group offered training to lawyers who have tried to use the tightly-controlled judiciary to redress apparent government abuses.
The most recent national census, held in 2010, recorded 600,000 expats living in China.
Since taking office in 2013, Xi Jinping has overseen a raft of laws and campaigns to secure China’s "national security" against both domestic and foreign threats, Reuters reports.

David: Great! Lend me those internal references so I can take a look. This will really help me write academic articles. Xiao Li: I can’t, we have a confidentiality system.

Xiao Li: “I didn’t know he was a spy; he used me! Officer: You show a very shallow understanding of secrecy for a State employee. You are suspected of violating our nation’s law.

China eliminating civil society by targeting human rights activists

Report details use of torture by Chinese security agencies – including beatings, stress positions and sleep deprivation – to force activists to confess ‘crimes’
By Benjamin Haas In Hong Kong

Since coming to power in 2012, Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on civil society. 

China’s human rights situation further deteriorated last year as police systematically tortured activists and forcibly disappeared government critics while state TV continued to broadcast forced confessions, a new report shows.
A creeping security state also attempted to codify much of its existing behaviour on paper, giving the police legal authority to criminalise a host of NGOs deemed politically sensitive by the authorities, according to the report by the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).
“The Chinese government seems intent on eliminating civil society through a combination of new legislation restricting the funding and operations of NGOs, and the criminalisation of human rights activities as a so-called threat to national security,” Frances Eve, a researcher at CHRD, told the Guardian.
“What stands out is the institutionalised use of torture to force defenders to confess that their legitimate and peaceful human rights work is somehow a ‘crime’.”
Since coming to power in 2012, Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on civil society. 

In 2015, police targeted almost 250 rights lawyers and activists in a “war on law”, and the effects of that campaign continued to be felt throughout last year.
Reports of torture while in detention in 2016 were rampant, with methods including beatings, attacks by fellow inmates on the orders of prison guards, stress positions, deprivation of food, water and sleep, inhumane conditions and deprivation of medical treatment.
In some cases, human rights activists were prevented from receiving medical care even once they were released.
Huang Yan, who was detained in November 2015, was suffering from ovarian cancer and diabetes. Police confiscated her diabetes medication, and despite an exam done at a detention facility in April 2016 showing the cancer had spread, she was not treated and was denied medical bail.
When she was finally released, Huang was scheduled to undergo surgery last November to treat her cancer, but the authorities pressured the hospital and the team of surgeons declined to treat her.
Torture also took more overt forms. 

Last year reports also emerged that rights lawyer Xie Yang was subject to beatings and stress positions in detention, with interrogators warning him: “We’ll torture you to death just like an ant”.
In November 2016, Jiang Tianyong, a respected Christian attorney, disappeared while about to board a train and police waited weeks to confirm he had been detained. 

Jiang’s whereabouts are still a mystery nearly three months later.
In a rare strongly-worded statement, the European Union called for his immediate release along with several other lawyers.
China also continued the practice of airing confessions on state television, a move that is reminiscent of internal Communist party political purges.
In one of the most prominent cases, Swedish NGO worker Peter Dahlin was paraded on the national broadcaster after three weeks in detention, declaring: “I have violated Chinese law through my activities here. I have caused harm to the Chinese government. I have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.”
The confessions air before detainees ever see the inside of a courtroom, and in Dahlin’s case he was promptly deported.
For those activists that do go to trial, in at least 15 cases last year police attempted to pressure activists into accepting government-appointed lawyers. 

In cases where state-appointed lawyers represented human rights activists, little defence was mounted and the accused pleaded guilty and promised not to appeal their cases.
The report also outlined two laws passed in 2016 that are likely to curb civil society: legislation regulating charitable giving and a law on foreign NGOs. 

The charity law, while not explicitly requiring all NGOs to register with the government, makes it difficult for unregistered organisations to raise funds domestically.
The foreign NGO regulations require overseas groups that give money to Chinese organisations to be registered with the police.
“Together, these laws will hamper the development of Chinese civil society by restricting their funding,” the CHRD report said.
“There are no more ‘grey areas’,” an unnamed human rights activist said in the report. 

“To advocate for human rights in China today, you must be willing to accept the reality that the government views your work as ‘illegal’.”