Yang Hengjun: China has charged dissident Australian dual national detained since January, lawyer says

A Chinese-Australian writer detained in Beijing since January was charged on Thursday and moved to a different detention centre in the Chinese capital, his lawyer said.

Australian lawyer Rob Stary said he had been told by Yang Hengjun’s family and friends of the charge and was seeking confirmation from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Stary said he did not know what the 53-year-old visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York had been charged with.

“It’s an offence under their state security laws. We expect it will be some form of espionage or something of that nature,” Stary said.

The news was confirmed by Yang’s friend Chongyi Feng, an associate professor at the University of Technology.

Yang Hengjun isn’t the first time Australia’s interests collided with China

Feng said that Yang’s wife was notified on Thursday that the Australian citizen had been formally charged and moved from residential surveillance to a new detention facility.

Chinese authorities have yet to publicly confirm charges against Yang, who was detained by state security agents in January after arriving at Guangzhou airport on a flight from New York. He was with his wife, Xiaoliang Yuan, and his 14-year-old stepdaughter.

Under Chinese law, authorities had until July 27 to decide whether to charge the novelist and ex-diplomat, who once worked at the ministry of foreign affairs in Beijing.

Feng said that Yang, a critic of Beijing’s suppression of democracy, was being targeted for political reasons and the suggestion that he posed a national security risk was “absurd”.

“I’m very angry of course,” Feng said. “They made this move simply because they haven’t got enough evidence.”

Feng said that he was also disappointed with the response of the Australian government to Yang’s detention, noting that it had not publicly called for his release.

“I believe they have concerns about trade, about other business,” Feng said. “They don’t want to openly offend the Chinese authorities.”

Australia lobbying hard for Yang Hengjun ‘but must respect China’s legal process’

Yang, who emigrated to Australia in the 1990s, was once described as China’s “most influential political blogger” because of his Chinese-language writings on his homeland. He previously went missing in China in 2011, before resurfacing several days later in an episode he described as a “misunderstanding”.

In a letter written before his detention and release after his arrest in January, Yang called on activists to keep fighting for “freedom, human rights, the rule of law, and justice to occur sooner” in China.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

In response to a question on whether Yang had been charged with endangering national security, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters on Thursday that the case remained under investigation.

“The Chinese national security department handles the case in strict accordance with the law and fully protects Yang Jun's lawful rights,” he said.

Payne said last week that her government had raised Yang’s case “regularly with China at senior levels.”

“We have requested his case be treated fairly, transparently, and expeditiously,” Payne said in a statement.

Australia continued to have consular access and had asked that Yang be granted immediate access to his Chinese lawyers, Payne said.

“Australia has asked for clarification regarding the reasons for his detention and we have said that if he is being detained purely for his political views, then he should be released,” she said.