The Australian government yesterday said it is seeking information about a Chinese-Australian writer who has been reported missing in China in what a friend suspects is part of a Chinese backlash against Canada’s arrest of Huawei Technologies Co (華為) executive Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟).
Novelist and online commentator Yang Hengjun (楊恆鈞) was a Chinese diplomat before he became an Australian citizen. Friends say he had been living in the US with his wife and stepdaughter, and had returned to China late last week.
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in a statement said it is “seeking information about an Australian citizen who has been reported missing in China. Owing to our privacy obligations we will not provide further comment.”
Photo: Reuters
Yang’s friend, University of Technology Sydney academic Feng Chongyi (馮崇義), said he believes that Yang is being detained in Beijing by the Chinese Ministry of State Security.
Yang’s disappearance was “directly linked to the Huawei case,” Feng said.
“I see his arrest as the extension of Chinese hostage diplomacy to take him as a hostage to press the Australian government and the Canadian government, American government,” Feng told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Feng was detained in China in 2017 near the end of a three-week trip during which he was researching human rights lawyers, and was questioned by security services for several days before he was allowed to return to Australia. He said on his return to Sydney that he was unable to discuss the details of his experience.
Yang’s disappearance comes ahead of a visit by Australian Minister for Defense Christopher Pyne to China. Pyne left Australia on Tuesday for a week-long visit to Japan, then China and Singapore.
Yang, his wife and her daughter flew from New York on Friday last week and arrived in Guangzhou on Saturday, Feng said, adding that the wife and child then flew on to Shanghai without him.
Feng said he believes that Yang and his wife were both in Beijing after delivering the child to family and friends in Shanghai.
Another friend, former Australian journalist and China analyst John Garnaut, said that Yang is “not only brilliant, but extraordinarily popular among the Chinese-speaking world, and a courageous and committed democrat.”
“This will reverberate globally if authorities do not quickly find an off-ramp,” Garnaut said on Twitter.
Similar concerns were raised over Yang’s safety in 2011 when he disappeared after calling a friend from a Chinese airport saying he was being followed by three men.
He later explained the matter had been a “misunderstanding,” saying that he had been unwell and switched his phone off.
Meanwhile, about a dozen Chinese labor activists and university students have either gone missing or been detained by police this week, sources told Reuters, amid a deepening crackdown on advocates seeking improved rights for factory workers.
A loose, but active coalition of workers, advocates and students across China has since July last year faced off against police, with dozens detained over their support for workers who protested after being blocked from forming a labor union with leaders of their choice.
The clampdown has spread to top universities, with some students being detained.
Three students and two recent graduates of Peking University, and a student from Renmin University have been missing for more than 24 hours, a solidarity group said late on Tuesday.
In Guangdong Province, two labor activists went missing and three were detained on suspicion of “disrupting public order” or “picking quarrels,” said Geoff Crothall of China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based labor rights group.
The students, all members of a group that has been calling for the release of those detained, had been hiding after releasing statements on Monday decrying police use of “confession” videos from some of those detained, a source who had been in contact with the students said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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