OVER a year ago, librarian Song Yongyi of Dickinson College was in a Chinese jail, accused of providing secrets to foreigners. Some 150 Sinologists around the world petitioned President Jiang Zemin to release him, and Song believes their outcry helped win his freedom. The State Department can conduct quiet diplomacy, but you still need public pressure. Gao Zhan, a sociologist at American University, was arrested in February on spying charges. Li is a naturalized U.S. citizen, while Gao holds a U.S. green card.
Colleagues believe all three are innocent researchers.
Among those signing the petition are more than 60 other Chinese scholars based abroad. Many still retain Chinese citizenship, making them particularly vulnerable to Beijing's wrath. Even Western-born Sinologists have been reluctant to publicly criticize Beijing, out of fear of losing access to mainland resources or in the belief that such criticism does more harm than good. The broad support makes the petition a powerful statement of distress over Beijing's apparent effort to intimidate the increasingly influential community of Chinese-born scholars working abroad. These scholars hit critical mass in the mid-1990s, when many completed PhDs at Western universities.