A Study Group Is Crushed in China's Grip

"We talked a lot about the indifference of our generation," said Fan Erjun, a short, spiky-haired graduate of Beihang University who was working as a tutor there. "We felt other young people were too materialistic and didn't worry about the right things."

They often disagreed, debating whether political change should begin inside or outside the party, for example, or how fast elections should be introduced. But they all believed that the Chinese people were suffering, that the party's limits on speech prevented discussion of pressing problems, and that democratic reform was necessary.

Yang, then 28, was the oldest member of the club and also the group's most consistent proponent of Western liberalism. At the opposite end of the ideological spectrum was his friend, Xu Wei, 26, a tall, bookish newspaper reporter and Communist Party member who clung to a Marxist ideology. They were the most mature and even-tempered members of the club, and Xu was elected its president.

There were four others.

Zhang Honghai, 27, a graduate of the Beijing Broadcasting Institute, had a friendly smile, but was the most emotional member of the group, the one most likely to raise his voice or resort to cursing.

Jin Haike, 24, a high school classmate of Fan's with a mop of dark hair and a habit of dressing sloppily, was the most outgoing member. He was put in charge of distributing members' essays because he had access to a computer at the Internet firm where he worked.

Huang Haixia, a petite college senior, was the only woman in the group and at 22 its youngest member. She was so sensitive she had nightmares about the children she saw begging on the streets.

And then there was Li Yuzhou.

Recruiting a Spy

Li was a junior when the Ministry of State Security first approached him. His pager chirped one afternoon, and a number he didn't recognize flashed on its screen. When he called, a man answered, introduced himself as a ministry official and asked if Li would meet him at a downtown hotel.

It was May 1999. Colleges across Beijing were seething over the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, which many Chinese refused to believe was accidental. Li was among the thousands of students who had participated in protests outside the U.S. Embassy. But he was confident he had done nothing wrong, and agreed to see the agent.

"I didn't think it was a big deal," recalled Li, then 27, a broad-shouldered, square-jawed man with a crew cut. "I wasn't afraid of anything then. And I was curious, because the Ministry of State Security is so mysterious and secretive."

Two men met him in the lobby of the hotel and thanked him for coming. They were young, he recalled, perhaps in their thirties, and explained they were investigating an unemployed teacher who had been delivering angry speeches on college campuses, denouncing the United States and blasting the Communist Party for not standing up to it.

Li knew who the agents were talking about and helped them, because he believed the man might be dangerous.

But the agents continued calling him and began asking questions about the general situation on campus and what students were saying about various issues. Again, Li agreed to help them.

"At the time, my thinking was very simple," he said. "I thought it was a good thing, because I was helping the nation. It was like they were taking a poll and trying to understand political trends on campus."

Li said he met with them every two or three weeks. The agents asked what students thought of the 2000 presidential election in Taiwan and Beijing's bid for the 2008 Summer Olympics. They also asked how students would react if Jiang Zemin decided not to retire. Li said later that he was not the only student helping the Ministry of State Security, though he was never introduced to any others. The two agents told him there was an entire department in the ministry devoted to monitoring universities, and said they were responsible only for People's University.

Still, Li appeared to be among the ministry's best sources on student activities. He said the government began paying him a stipend the equivalent of $60 to $75 per month and asking him to turn in written reports. After several months, he said, the ministry also asked for his résumé and decided to make him a full-time employee after graduation.

In many ways, the ministry had recruited an ideal agent. Li had a wide circle of friends because he ran a popular Internet cafe and helped start a student organization. He also seemed enthusiastic about the work. Growing up in a poor village, he dreamed of becoming a police officer and often heard his father complain about Mao Zedong's destructive Cultural Revolution. Li said he saw a job with the Ministry of State Security as a chance to fight such injustice.

He said he believed the Chinese government needed to change, and he hoped to promote reform from within. "Even in high school, I knew the Communist Party was no good," he said. "I knew it was a problem with the political system, that it was a dictatorship."

When he met Yang Zili and the others, they quickly became friends. He admired them for their idealism and commitment and saw them almost every week. "We were like brothers," he said. "We had the same ideas."

But when the state security agents asked him to provide information about his new friends, Li agreed. Of the 30 or so reports he wrote for the ministry, he said, four or five focused on his friends and the study group he established with them.

Li told himself it was better for them to have someone inside the ministry looking out for them. If he quit, it would only ruin his career and draw attention to his friends, he reasoned. But by investigating them himself, he could protect them.

In any case, Li said he was convinced that nothing would come of his reports. After all, he said, Yang and the others weren't doing anything wrong.