Posted on 06/10/2005 4:25:59 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
HONG KONG - Ching Cheong, the Hong Kong-based correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times who has been detained by Chinese anti-spy authorities since late April, is possibly only one among hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Hong Kong who could be picked up at any time by Chinese authorities.
According to the Hong Kong Journalists' Association, this week Chinese security officials told Ching's wife that he was being held under house arrest in Beijing.
On May 31, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) had made a brief statement over Ching's arrest. "Ching Cheong is a permanent resident of Hong Kong. He was detained under an espionage investigation on April 22 and he has already confessed that he was paid by an outside-territory intelligence agency to collect information," said Kong Quan, an MFA spokesman.
The term "outside-territory" by definition refers to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, which are individual tariff zones (special administrative regions) separate from mainland China. As far as espionage is concerned, it singly means Taiwan, which is considered a renegade province by Beijing.
China has yet to divulge detailed information on the charges to be leveled against Ching. The two seemingly most learned theories floating around suggest that he was picked up either because he was too interested in the manuscripts of a disgraced Communist Party chief, or he was too careless in receiving rewards for his untold services.
Ever since news of Ching's detention was first heard in late May, there has been much talk of the manuscripts of Zhao Ziyang. Zhao was the late, disgraced secretary general of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. He was unseated for expressing sympathy toward the student-led demonstrations of 1989 that ended in bloodshed at Tiananmen Square. Zhao opposed the party caucus' decision to crush by force what Beijing condemned the "counter-revolutionary rebellion" at the time, and had been held under house arrest until he passed away on January 17 this year.
According to Ching's wife, Mary Lau, her husband was trapped. In mid-April, Ching received a phone call from a mainland source who volunteered to offer him a batch of manuscripts of unpublished interviews with Zhao, but he was then apprehended on arrival in Guangzhou, just across the border from Hong Kong in China.
A source within the Hong Kong publishing industry, who deals with topics on China's politics, gave more detail on the frame-up theory to Asia Times Online.
The call Ching responded to, said the source, was from Huang Wei, a woman who assisted in the publishing of a memoir by Zong Fengming, the qigong (breathing exercises) mentor of Zhao. The memoir provides a genuine account of talks between Zhao and Zong on politics, both domestically and abroad, over the past 15 years. As soon as the book was published in Hong Kong, Huang was held under investigation, but was set free after a month. She has since shied away from friends and the press, except possibly Ching.
The Chinese version of Asia Times Online reported the above account last week, without naming Huang. Within two days, Huang re-emerged to resume her contacts with friends, denying any part in Ching's fate, albeit confirming that she had met Ching two days prior to his arrest. Efforts to contact her, however, have been in vain.
At about the same time that Huang came out to disassociate herself from the incident, Ching's wife brought up another theory in an open letter to Hu Jintao, the current Communist Party chief.
In the letter, Mary Lau said Ching had for a couple of years been working with Lu Jianhua, a renowned Chinese TV commentator and social sciences researcher. Lau said the pair had gauged public opinion in Hong Kong to help Hu's private office devise Beijing's new policies toward Hong Kong and Taiwan. In gratitude for Ching's participation, Lu gave Ching computer records of internal speeches made by Hu.
"My husband stored the internal speeches in his notebook [computer], and that has now been ascribed as proof of him spying," said Lau in her open letter.
If that is the case, according to a veteran Hong Kong-based editor, hundreds, if not thousands of Hong Kong people are open to arrest by Chinese authorities at any time. It is an open secret in Hong Kong that a large number of residents - journalists, academics, politicians, merchants, etc - are in frequent contact with China's state security agents every day or week.
Most of the contacts are for the agents to collect views expressed by Hong Kong people from different walks of life. Some of the contacts in fact are to pry on sectors of the community, such as political parties or big enterprises, to find out if they have anything to hide from Beijing. Few of these contacts are without a promise of reward. Some rewards may be business opportunities or conveniences. As for journalists, they are fed from time to time with information worth a front-page headline.
The danger is that such a headline could then be used as proof of espionage. Of course, any detention would be carried out by another team of state agents.
Incidentally, this correspondent had tea with Ching last year during which he confirmed that he was among one of those in frequent contact with state security agents. They would mostly exchange views on current issues, according to Ching. He then subtly acknowledged that every move he made in mainland China was presumed to be under watch.
This senior journalist who took for granted that he was being watched is now being accused of spying. Ching, 55, a Hong Kong resident who holds a British National Overseas passport and is a Singapore permanent resident, started his journalism career in Hong Kong more than 30 years ago as a junior reporter at the pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po. He was at one time a Beijing-based correspondent, and then promoted to vice editor-in-chief. In protest to the Tiananmen crackdown of 1989, he joined a mass resignation and founded a news magazine, on a shoestring budget. Afterward, he was hired by the Straits Times.
Anyone surprised here?
Didn't think so.
How about millions. Its a brutal dictatorship after all.
They won't have to do a LARGE round-up... a "moderate", well-publicized one will make the rest of the journalists self-regulate . . . the exceptions will be picked up on the NEXT medium-sized roundup.
ping to drmaartens
Ooops! Try to get it right this time. Sorry.
Like minds. It seems a few people are starting to remember, "oh yeah they are Communists" aren't they!!Never forget they don't!
Woe is Hong Kong. They are being slowly swallowed by a Communist dragon. Perhaps we could use this as a pretext to round up Red China's spies in the US. I know, I know...wishful thinking.
Sure would free up a lot of H1B visas for Indians ;-)
"It seems a few people are starting to remember, "oh yeah they are Communists"
My neighborhood in the San Francisco East Bay has seen the direct effects of Hong Kong Chinese hedging their bets against the mainland. Hong Kong families are buying up houses here and moving their families to the US just in case. I'm not sure how they manage the citizenship issues, but they are here.
One result of this is that my daughter's school is one of THE highest rated public school in the state. This is not due to the teacher's union, but the direct result of these immigrants not fooling around when it comes to education.
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