JayAtl
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An American engineer and entrepreneur whose inability to leave China for the last five years has been a low-grade irritant for U.S.-Chinese relations was allowed to return home to Los Angeles on Monday, according to his family.
Coming just days before a high-profile summit between President Xi Jinping and President Obama at a California desert retreat, the government’s decision to allow the engineer, Hu Zhicheng, to leave China suggests that Beijing may be seeking to start the two days of talks on a positive note.
Other than a call from a relative in China saying he was on a Los Angeles-bound plane, Mr. Hu’s, wife, Hong Li, said she had no advance notice that her husband would be coming home.
“We are so happy right now,” she said by phone. “My son picked him up and ran around in circles. The last time he saw his father he was 13. Now he’s five years older, and a foot taller.”
She said her husband was sleeping and that she did not want to wake him.
A Chinese-born inventor trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Hu had in recent years been trapped in a bizarre limbo after angering a well-connected business associate who apparently used his influence to prevent him from passing through China’s stringent border-exit controls.
In 2008, he was imprisoned for 17 months on commercial theft charges that even Chinese prosecutors said were unfounded. After his release, however, he was repeatedly blocked from leaving China by immigration agents who claimed he was a wanted man. His suspicions aside, Mr. Hu said he was never able to find out who wanted him. “I think the goal is to make me suffer, and keep me apart from my family,” he said in a 2011 interview.
A well-regarded inventor with 48 patents to his name, Mr. Hu has been a pioneer in automobile emission control technology. After two decades working abroad, he returned to China in 2004 to start a company that provides catalytic converters to the country’s booming auto industry. The company has grown so successful that it now outfits roughly half of China’s domestically manufactured cars.
His problems began, he said, after he refused to buy what he said were inferior components from a company whose politically connected executive would not take no for an answer.
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.”
Mr. Kamm and others credited Mr. Hu’s daughter, Victoria, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, for using social media to bring attention to her father’s plight. A petition campaign she launched in 2011 yielded more than 60,000 signatures; on Tuesday, she celebrated his return with a posting on Facebook that drew hundreds of likes. “After 5 years, my dad is finally home!!” she wrote. “Watching him walk around trying to find the chopsticks is the best feeling ever.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/w...-us-executive-before-xis-visit.html?ref=world
Coming just days before a high-profile summit between President Xi Jinping and President Obama at a California desert retreat, the government’s decision to allow the engineer, Hu Zhicheng, to leave China suggests that Beijing may be seeking to start the two days of talks on a positive note.
Other than a call from a relative in China saying he was on a Los Angeles-bound plane, Mr. Hu’s, wife, Hong Li, said she had no advance notice that her husband would be coming home.
“We are so happy right now,” she said by phone. “My son picked him up and ran around in circles. The last time he saw his father he was 13. Now he’s five years older, and a foot taller.”
She said her husband was sleeping and that she did not want to wake him.
A Chinese-born inventor trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Hu had in recent years been trapped in a bizarre limbo after angering a well-connected business associate who apparently used his influence to prevent him from passing through China’s stringent border-exit controls.
In 2008, he was imprisoned for 17 months on commercial theft charges that even Chinese prosecutors said were unfounded. After his release, however, he was repeatedly blocked from leaving China by immigration agents who claimed he was a wanted man. His suspicions aside, Mr. Hu said he was never able to find out who wanted him. “I think the goal is to make me suffer, and keep me apart from my family,” he said in a 2011 interview.
A well-regarded inventor with 48 patents to his name, Mr. Hu has been a pioneer in automobile emission control technology. After two decades working abroad, he returned to China in 2004 to start a company that provides catalytic converters to the country’s booming auto industry. The company has grown so successful that it now outfits roughly half of China’s domestically manufactured cars.
His problems began, he said, after he refused to buy what he said were inferior components from a company whose politically connected executive would not take no for an answer.
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.”
Mr. Kamm and others credited Mr. Hu’s daughter, Victoria, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, for using social media to bring attention to her father’s plight. A petition campaign she launched in 2011 yielded more than 60,000 signatures; on Tuesday, she celebrated his return with a posting on Facebook that drew hundreds of likes. “After 5 years, my dad is finally home!!” she wrote. “Watching him walk around trying to find the chopsticks is the best feeling ever.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/w...-us-executive-before-xis-visit.html?ref=world
How do you put someone in prison for 17 months without a conviction! Dangerous to do business over there I guess...
