Australian Writer Yang Hengjun Given Suspended Death Sentence in Beijing on Espionage Charges

 3 Chinese Soldiers guard a police car.

The Chinese government gave Australian writer Yang Hengjun a suspended death sentence in Beijing on February 4 for espionage charges against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), reported Reuters.

Yang, an Australian citizen of Chinese origin, is a pro-democracy blogger and espionage writer. He is also a visiting scholar at Columbia University and publishes independently on American and Chinese politics.

Yang was imprisoned in Beijing for five years after his detainment in a Guangzhou airport in 2019. He underwent a trial behind closed doors three years later. After multiple delays in the court proceedings, a Beijing court sentenced him to a suspended death penalty for espionage.

In China, prisoners who receive a suspended sentence are automatically sentenced to life in prison after their two-year exemption from execution so long as they do not commit any crimes within that time frame, according to government policy. 

The case has not been made public, but Yang’s longtime friend and Sydney professor Feng Chongyi stated that Yang had conveyed information to Taiwan 30 years before his sentence in 1994, according to Bannedbook.org. Though Yang’s background is complex and much of it remains unavailable to the public, the severity of the punishment, which is rarely handed down for spying, has propelled Yang into the media spotlight.

According to the Diplomat, Yang has criticized the CCP regime throughout his career, writing pieces on China’s human rights abuses. He also spent his time as an author of spy novels. One of his novels, titled Fatal Weakness, may have been published in 2002, but it is all the more chilling in the context of the present. 

In America, Yang spent the majority of his time as a businessman, running a “daigou” e-commerce store on WeChat catered to Chinese buyers looking for American products, wrote Reuters. Yang married Yuan Ruijuan, a prominent nationalist blogger. Yuan later wrote an appeals letter to President Xi Jinping testifying on her husband’s behalf according to the Sydney Morning Herald, stating that he “deeply loves China and the Chinese people.”

During his imprisonment, Yang stated that initial interrogations involved residential surveillance at a designated location (RSDL) as well as physical torture, reported the Guardian. He reported difficulty walking, memory loss, dizziness, and more as a result of his treatment by Chinese authorities.

Yang’s family agreed to not appeal his suspended death sentence, citing concerns about the delay of the trial. In the best-case scenario, Yang hopes to be relocated to Australia for better medical treatment for a large kidney cyst.

Yang’s punishment reflects the growing influence of China’s Ministry of State Security, the intelligence agency in charge of crackdowns related to national security. Additionally, following the arrest and detainment of Australian journalist Cheng Lei, Yang’s case embodies a trend of setbacks in Chinese-Australian relations. However, unlike Cheng, who was later released, Yang’s circumstances are not quite so clear. According to the United States Institute of Peace, the verdict of Yang’s trial represents a pattern of China’s State Security’s increasingly hard-line views on foreign policy and security that may jeopardize the integrity of justice and international cooperation going forward.