Li Shaomin tells of captivity in China

Princeton University lecture offers hair-raising story of one man’s courage.

By: Jeff Milgram
   Li Shaomin, who received a doctorate from Princeton University, was arrested Feb. 25 as he crossed over from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, China, blindfolded and taken to "a secret white house," where he was kept in solitary confinement and interrogated for four to five hours each day.
   Dr. Li told the story of his run-in with the Chinese legal system to a packed lecture hall at Princeton University’s Frist Campus Center on Monday afternoon.
   He called his experience "my participatory observations of the Chinese legal system."
   The program was part lecture on the Chinese economic and legal system and part hair-raising story of one man’s courage against a repressive regime. Dr. Li, an American citizen, used drawings and a dry sense of humor to tell the story of his arrest, confinement, trial and, finally, expulsion from China.
   Dr. Li said he was kept at the two-story white house, located somewhere in Shenzhen, until May 15, when he was charged with espionage and transferred to a prison for political prisoners, where he shared a cell with two other men.
   During the interrogations, Dr. Li said he was verbally but never physically abused.
   He showed a drawing he made of his three interrogators — the leader, whom he called nice, one he called "mean face" and the third who took notes. Dr. Li said the notes were "not what I said."
   Dr. Li said he was charged with being a member of a Taiwanese group called the Reunification Alliance and the only evidence raised against him was a statement written by a Chinese security administrator identifying the group as a spy agency.
   Dr. Li said he was not allowed to make a final statement during his trial in July. He said the three judges came back after a lunch break and announced their verdict.
   Dr. Li came to Princeton after taking part in a statistical analysis conference in North Carolina.
   Dr. Li said he might have become a target of the Chinese security service because of work he did with the democracy movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
   Dr. Li is not the only member of his family to run afoul of the Chinese legal system. His father, reformist Li Honglin, was jailed for 10 months.
   When news of Dr. Li’s detention was made public in April, many in the Princeton community rallied to his support. Nearly 400 members of the international community of China scholars signed a petition calling for his release or speedy trial.
   Former Princeton University President Harold Shapiro wrote a letter to the president of China protesting Dr. Li’s treatment and its potential effect on academic exchanges.
   New Jersey’s congressional delegation and President George W. Bush also came to Dr. Li’s defense. A rally on his behalf was held in June during Princeton’s Reunions weekend and speakers included Rep. Rush Holt (D-12).
   Dr. Li has denied the espionage charges and has called for political and legal reform in China. He also has called for more active support by Hong Kong for scholars working in China.
   Dr. Li received his bachelor’s degree in economics at Peking University in 1982 and his doctorate in sociology at Princeton in 1988. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, he worked for AT&T for five years before going to Hong Kong, where he became an associate professor of marketing at the City University of Hong Kong.
   He has written or edited nine books in English and Chinese.
   In addition to his own case, Dr. Li spoke about the informal system that governs business transactions in China. This relationship-based system is slowly giving way to a more formal system of laws government private property, he said.
   He also called upon the Chinese government to adopt a constitution similar to the 1946 constitution used before the communist takeover.
   Dr. Li said he is not optimistic that would ever happen.