Anti-Corruption Reporter Jiang Weiping Released from Prison One Year Early

The Intermediate People's Court in Dalian city, Liaoning province, commuted the six-year prison sentence of journalist Jiang Weiping by one year, releasing him on January 3, the Washington Post reported the same day. On January 4, Reuters quoted Jiang's wife as saying that the court released Jiang one year early for good behavior. Chinese courts have the discretion to authorize commutation of sentences under Articles 78 and 79 of the Criminal Law, and Article 221 of the Criminal Procedure Law. Jiang remains barred from speaking to journalists, because he continues to be deprived of his political rights as part of his original sentence. Jiang's wife also told Reuters that she hopes Jiang can join her in Canada, where she now lives, but that for now he is staying with her sister in Dalian, and that his health is "not very good."

In a January 3 press release, the Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S. NGO that monitors political imprisonment in China, said Jiang was "one of China's best known investigative journalists," and that authorities imprisoned him after he wrote articles about corruption in northeast China. The Washington Post report said Jiang was on a list of 13 prisoners that U.S. officials delivered during a 2002 meeting between President George W. Bush and then-Chinese President Jiang Zemin. According to the Washington Post, senior U.S. officials pressed for Jiang Weiping's release in several subsequent meetings, and Clark T. Randt Jr., the U.S. Ambassador to China, raised Jiang's case in speeches.

See below for additional background on Jiang's case.

Jiang Weiping was a reporter for Xinhua before becoming the northeastern China bureau chief of the pro-Beijing Hong Kong daily newspaper Wen Hui Bao (Wen Wei Po) in the early 1990s, according to a June 2003 Human Rights in China (HRIC) report. Writing under the pen name Wen Qingtian, Jiang published four articles in Hong Kong's "Front Line" magazine between June and September 1999, including one entitled "Former Daqing Mayor Qian Dihua Arrested: Richest Man in the Area Who Kept 29 Mistresses," and another entitled "Bo Xilai's Version of Honest Government Catches the Small Ones and Lets the Big Ones Go." At the time Bo Xilai, now Minister of Commerce and son of Communist Party elder Bo Yibo, was Governor of Liaoning province. Jiang Weiping reported that Bo had covered up corruption among friends and family when he served as mayor of Dalian, Liaoning.

In April 2000, Jiang resigned from his position with the Wen Hui Bao when the paper relocated its northeastern China bureau from Dalian to Shenyang, according to a January 5 Epoch Times report (in Chinese). Several NGOs, including Reporters Without Borders, International PEN, and the Committee to Protect Journalists (which gave Jiang its International Press Freedom Award in 2001), reported that Chinese authorities detained Jiang in December 2000. According to HRIC:

On December 4, 2000, journalist Jiang Weiping had just dropped his wife off at work in Dalian and was getting out of his car when security agents whisked him away to a local army base. He was held there for several weeks in a room with no heat, despite the frigid temperatures in China's northeast. Jiang's wife and young daughter went for one month with no news of his whereabouts.

According to a Dui Hua Foundation statement dated March 17, 2003, on Jiang’s case, however, Chinese authorities did not detain Jiang formally until January 4, 2001. The Dui Hua Foundation notes that Chinese officials told its representative that authorities deemed Jiang's detention before January 4, 2001, to be “residential surveillance,” and would not count that time against his sentence.

Sources agree that the Dalian Intermediate People's Court sentenced Jiang on January 21, 2002, to eight years imprisonment for disclosing state secrets and inciting subversion. On appeal, the Liaoning High People's Court reduced Jiang's sentence to six years on December 26, 2002.

Huang Jin'gao, another whistleblower who exposed massive government corruption through his writing, received similar treatment from authorities. In December 2004, unidentified people took Huang from the Lianjiang Royal Hotel, where he was scheduled to attend a meeting. He was dismissed from his