It was five years ago this month when the central government charged Nanjing-born scholar Gao Zhan with spying for Taiwan. Word of Gao's arrest quickly reached Washington DC, where the then 38-year-old had been working as a scholar-in-residence at American University's noted School of International Service.
An angry groundswell of protest against the detention of the self-proclaimed dissident sprang up in the US capital. It began with her university colleagues, who knew Gao as an earnest wife and mother of Andrew, five.
Gao's US supporters quickly grew to include Republican Senator George Allen of Virginia, where Gao had lived as a permanent resident before visiting China with her family. Mr Allen, a member of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, gave a speech before Congress chiding Beijing for holding Gao on spying charges while presenting no evidence, aside from asserting that she had reportedly confessed.
'Mr President,' declared Senator Allen, 'today is the 39th birthday of Gao Zhan, a woman of Chinese descent who lived in Virginia with her husband Xue Donghua and her five-year-old son. [But] far from spending this 39th birthday in the warm embrace of her family, she is enduring her 87th day of detention by officials of the People's Republic of China, some 7,000 miles from home in an unknown location and in unknown condition.'
Senator Allen went on to introduce legislation to make Gao a US citizen. From there, her plight became known to then US secretary of state Colin Powell, and her story was quickly moved up to the White House. US President George W. Bush intervened, personally asking then president Jiang Zemin to release Gao.
Soon after the White House took up Gao's case, her 10-year prison sentence was dropped and Gao was deported to the US, where she received a hero's welcome. Civil rights organisations such as the New York-based Human Rights Watch, and the Washington-based American Immigration Law Foundation, acclaimed Gao's bravery and her righteous return home.