Beijing Court Sentences Journalist Ching Cheong to 5 Years' Imprisonment

November 26, 2006

The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court sentenced journalist Ching Cheong to five years' imprisonment and one year's deprivation of political rights on August 31 for spying for Taiwan, according to an August 31 Xinhua report (via the China Daily). The report cited a "document released by the court" as saying Ching "supplied information involving state secrets and intelligence he received from contacts in Beijing" to two people from a Taiwan foundation via fax and e-mail from May 2004 to April 2005. Ching was tried on August 15 behind closed doors in proceedings that lasted only a few hours.

The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court sentenced journalist Ching Cheong to five years' imprisonment and one year's deprivation of political rights on August 31 for spying for Taiwan, according to an August 31 Xinhua report (via the China Daily). The report cited a "document released by the court" as saying Ching "supplied information involving state secrets and intelligence he received from contacts in Beijing" to two people from a Taiwan foundation via fax and e-mail from May 2004 to April 2005. Ching was tried on August 15 behind closed doors in proceedings that lasted only a few hours.

On April 22, 2005, agents from China's Ministry of State Security detained Ching, then the Hong Kong-based chief China correspondent for the Straits Times of Singapore, in Guangzhou city, Guangdong province, when he traveled there from Hong Kong to meet with a source, according to a May 30, 2005, Washington Post report. On May 31, 2005, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) spokesman Kong Quan said Ching had confessed that "on the basis of the request of a foreign intelligence agency, he carried out intelligence gathering activities in China, and collected large spying fees," according to a June 1, 2005, Takung Pao report (in Chinese). On June 2, 2005, according to a press conference transcript on the MFA Web site, Kong said "Ching Cheong has been gathering intelligence in China's mainland under the order and direction of an overseas intelligence agency." The Beijing state security bureau arrested Ching on August 5, 2005, according to an August 6 Xinhua report (via the People's Daily, in Chinese). The same report stated Ching had spied for Taiwan from 2000 through March 2005.

Ching's imprisonment is the most recent in a series of Chinese government detentions, arrests, and imprisonments of journalists and writers during 2006, including Zhao Yan (state secrets, later changed to fraud), Yang Tianshui (subversion), Guo Qizhen (inciting subversion), Li Yuanlong (inciting subversion), Li Changqing (disseminating terrorist information), and Zan Aizong (spreading rumors). Chinese authorities also recently detained documentary filmmaker Hao Wu for 140 days. Authorities never provided a reason for holding Wu, but he was shooting a documentary about China's unregistered house churches at the time he was taken into custody.

The lack of transparency with which the Chinese government has handled Ching's case makes it difficult to determine the precise nature of the charges against him. According to a document posted on the Boxun Web site (in Chinese) purporting to be a copy of the court's verdict, Ching was found to have violated Clause 1 of Article 110 of the Criminal Law, which makes it a crime join an espionage organization or accept a mission from such an organization and thereby endanger national security.

The Chinese government's interpretation of what constitutes a state secret is so broad as to include essentially all matters of public concern. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention identified the government’s use of state secrets exceptions as an area of concern in the report on its September 2004 mission to China. Article 8 of the Law on the Protection of State Secrets and Article 4 of the Measures for the Implementation of the Law on the Protection of State Secrets also define state secrets to include information ranging from that which "concern[s] major policy decisions on state affairs" to that which "weakens the nation's economy or technological strength." In addition, the Chinese government has determined that it has the authority to classify documents as state secrets, even if the documents are publicly available, after Chinese citizens have provided them to foreigners. Officials have used this authority to imprison people such as housing rights activist Zheng Enchong. In recent years, 70 percent of all cases of criminal disclosure of state secrets were the result of a "faulty understanding of state secrets," according to a May 1, 2005, Xinhua report.