Chinese-American engineer and businessman Hu Zhicheng arrived back in the U.S. on Monday night after being prevented from leaving China for nearly five years. John Rogers at the Associated Press explained Hu and his wife Hong Li’s story:
Hu became chief scientist and president of a company trying to build top-grade catalytic converters and was honored by the province of Jiangsu as one of its leading innovators. Li, meanwhile, started her own business supplying materials to the company that employed her husband. She also holds a doctorate in engineering.
Eventually, a competitor accused Hu of stealing information and providing it to his wife’s company. When Li and the couple’s children returned to the U.S. for a summer visit in 2008, he was nervous enough to warn them not to come back to China. Shortly before Thanksgiving that year, he was arrested.
Hu was jailed for 17 months while police investigated the case. He was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing and released, but authorities refused to let him leave China after his business rival filed a lawsuit seeking financial damages. [Source]
The timing of Hu’s release has been read as an encouraging signal from China ahead of a summit meeting between Obama and Xi this week. From Andrew Jacobs at The New York Times:
John Kamm, executive director of Dui Hua Foundation, an American organization that advocates on behalf of political prisoners in China, said he was encouraged by the departure of Mr. Hu, whose inability to leave despite the absence of legal charges against him had frustrated human rights advocates and American diplomats.
Even if the case was easy for Chinese authorities to solve – Mr. Hu, after all, was never convicted of a crime – Mr. Kamm said the timing of its resolution suggested that China’s new president may be willing to clear up several nettlesome human rights cases, especially those involving American citizens, as the two countries grapple with contentious issues like North Korea and allegations of Chinese cyber hacking. Top on the list is Xue Feng, a Chinese-American geologist who is serving eight years in prison on commercial theft charges that many legal experts say are spurious.
“The case of Hu Zhicheng has been hanging over everyone’s head for a long time,” Mr. Kamm said. “Perhaps I’m too optimistic, but it may signal that Xi Jinping could be willing to move forward on other, more sensitive cases.” [Source]
