April 27
On this day in 2005 Chinese journalist Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison
"While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are Pygmies,"
- Rep. Tom Lantos
This day in 2005, in an early and infamous example of the concessions made by US technology companies to gain business in China, the response of a Taiwanese immigrant’s US business to a demand by China’s state security led to the sentencing of a Chinese journalist to prison.
On April 27, 2005, the Changsha1 Intermediate People’s Court sentenced poet and business journalist Shi Tao 师涛 to 10 years in prison, on charges of “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities”2. 36 years old, Shi Tao had served as editorial director of the Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News).3
His conviction originally stemmed from an email he sent a year earlier, in April 2004, to US based journalist Cary Hung, who was editor of the Minzhu Luntan (Democracy Forum) dissident website and Minzhu Tongxun (Democracy Communication), an “e-mail based information network.”4
Shi had emailed Hung notes on instructions given to his magazine by the Propaganda Bureau on the return of dissidents to China to mark the 15th anniversary of the crackdown on Tian’anmen Square protestors in 1989. Subsequently, Shi’s notes were distributed through Hung’s publications.
The Committee to Protect Journalists relates, “Shi had written articles for Minzhu Luntan and received payment for his work. Though Hung has clarified that he did not pay Shi for the notes from his editorial meeting, other payments that Shi received from Hung was used as evidence of selling state secrets.”
Potentially, these actions are how he originally came to the attention of the Chinese government, which is known to monitor the activities of dissidents in the United States5 as recently written about by The Bureau:
It did not take long - Shi was detained seven months after emailing the US based journalists. But what ended up being crucial was how he chose to email the US based Hung - by using his Yahoo email account.
Five months following his sentencing, we come to the Taiwanese immigrant’s company - translated court documents indicated that Yahoo, (specifically their Hong Kong subsidiary) had “provided Chinese investigators with detailed information that helped them link Shi's personal e-mail account and a specific message containing the “state secret” to the IP address of his computer.”6 Yahoo was co-founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang.7
Following his detention, authorities harassed his family, were put under surveillance, and the Public Security Bureau compelled his wife to submit to regular questioning and to divorce him. He was sent first to Chisan prison in Hunan where he polished gemstones, following which he suffered various health conditions and was later transferred to a jail in Yinchuan and not forced to work.8
At the time, CNET reported that Yahoo justified its actions by citing their common practice: "Just like any other global company, Yahoo must ensure that its local country sites must operate within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based."9
Undated photo of Shi Tao provided to Time by the Committee to Protect Journalists
Following the revelation of Yahoo’s involvement, Executive VP and General Counsel Michael Callahan testified before congress in February 2006, stating that he had no knowledge of China’s investigation when the company provided information to PRC authorities.1011 Following an October 2006 statement by the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Tom Lantos that Callahan had given “false information” at the hearing, Reuters reported that Callahan admitted he had only found out that same month, coincidentally, that the information he had provided in February was inaccurate and that the Chinese government investigation dealt with state secrets. The problem resulting from a bad translation of the government order provided to a company lawyer.12
While the activities by Chinese citizens charged under “providing state secrets” might be arbitrary, it is hard to imagine the phrase itself being translated into anything other than “state secrets.”
November 2007, Yahoo co-founder and then CEO Jerry Yang testified before the Armed Services Committee together with Callahan and faced the withering critique of its chair, also an immigrant, from Hungary, and a holocaust survivor, who clearly was in no mood to hear of justifications for collaboration with a dictatorial regime.
NPR reported on the testimony at the time:
MADELEINE BRAND, host:
China was also the subject of a dramatic hearing yesterday in Washington. The CEO of Yahoo and the company's general counsel were called to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Three years ago, Yahoo turned over user information to the Chinese government and that led to the arrest of a Chinese journalist named Shi Tao. Shi Tao is now serving a 10 year prison sentence. This is how committee chairman Democrat Tom Lantos of California ended his opening statement.
Representative TOM LANTOS (Democrat, California): Shi Tao's mother is sitting in the first row behind you. I would urge you to beg the forgiveness of the mother whose son is languishing behind bars due to Yahoo's actions.
BRAND: ….Jim Puzzanghera wrote about the hearing….Jim, I understand that Jerry Yang, Yahoo's CEO, actually turned around and bowed several times to the journalist's mother.
Mr. JIM PUZZANGHERA (Los Angeles Times): Yeah. It was quite a remarkable moment. He turned around - and he came to this country from Taiwan when he was a child so he is familiar with the Chinese culture - and he turned around and he bowed to Shi Tao's mother, who was seated directly behind him at the hearing. She then started weeping and was pretty emotional. And I had a chance to talk to her after the hearing and she said that she accepted his apology, particularly because he bowed and that they are both Chinese and that she understood what he meant in that gesture.
BRAND: Yet she is still suing Yahoo.
Mr. PUZZANGHERA: Yes. I mean, she thinks beyond the apology, Yahoo needs to do more to help get her son out of jail and to prevent other Chinese dissidents who are journalists from being sent to jail because of the information that they send on the Internet.13
C-SPAN unfortunately was unable to keep the camera in the right place to catch the riveting moment, but the committee was not impressed either way.
Some clips of the testimony are available here:
The entire testimony can be found here, courtesy of C-SPAN. Yang’s testimony begins around 58:20, and Lantos closing statement at 3:17:20 is worth listening to:
Mr. CALLAHAN. Thank you.
Congressman Smith, as I expressed earlier, and I think as Mr. Yang has expressed, we absolutely will look at the opportunity as you suggest. I understand the importance to the committee and understand the importance to the issue, and I will commit to consult with our counsel about it.
Chairman LANTOS. It is mainly important to the committee, gentleman, but it ought to be a great deal more important to your own conscience. Don’t accommodate the committee. Look into your own soul and see the damage you have done to an innocent human being and to his family. That is what you should respond to. Don’t propitiate the committee. It will make no difference to the committee what you do, but it will make you better human beings if you recognize your own responsibility for the enormous damage your policies have created. That should be your guide.
Other possibly unrelated elements of note was Yang disclosing his 40% stake in “a Chinese company called Alibaba.”14
Together with another jailed journalist, Shi’s family later sued Yahoo resulting in an undisclosed settlement.15 16 Shi was ultimately released in 2013 after spending 8.5 years in jail. Wikipedia states he still lives in Yinchuan.17
Follow up interview with Tom Lantos.
Capital of the province of Hunan
https://www.amnestyusa.org/cases/shi-tao/
https://cpj.org/2005/07/court-upholds-10year-sentence-for-journalist-shi-t/
https://cpj.org/2005/07/court-upholds-10year-sentence-for-journalist-shi-t/
Other examples: https://www.thetimes.com/world/asia/article/the-making-of-a-chinese-spy-how-beijing-turned-dissident-who-fled-to-us-jvcbzmxfl
A Reporters Without Borders report cited in: https://www.cnet.com/culture/bloggers-bemoan-yahoos-role-in-writers-arrest/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Yang
https://www.amnestyusa.org/cases/shi-tao/
https://www.cnet.com/culture/bloggers-bemoan-yahoos-role-in-writers-arrest/
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/media-telecom/yahoo-apologises-to-us-lawmakers-over-china-case-idUSN02625187/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/yahoo-settles-china-torture-lawsuit/
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/media-telecom/yahoo-apologises-to-us-lawmakers-over-china-case-idUSN02625187/
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/16075410
https://web.archive.org/web/20090226095403/https://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/38820.pdf
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2007/06/12/2003364858
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/yahoo-settles-china-torture-lawsuit/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Tao_(journalist)