A Study Group Is Crushed in China's Grip

Troubles Begin

The New Youth Study Group never lived up to its founders' expectations. They tried to make it formal, signing an oath, writing a charter dedicating themselves to "studying, researching and solving social problems," even coming up with a system of dues. But when it came to meetings and activities, everybody was busy with school or work or their personal lives. It was rare for more than three or four of them to find the time to get together.

Occasionally, the group managed to organize seminars. One event in the fall of 2000 was attended by two liberal-minded scholars, banned from publishing in state media, who criticized the Communist government and argued for democratic reform. Li said a member of the banned China Democracy Party showed up at the session, too.

A few weeks later, the Ministry of Public Security, China's main police agency, began to harass one of the study group's members, Jin Haike. They detained him for questioning several times, asking about the New Youth Study Group and its ties with the China Democracy Party. They also informed his employer that he was under investigation and tried to persuade him to spy on his friends.

Instead, Jin told the others what happened. Li was surprised police were investigating the group, but not alarmed, and he informed his superiors in the Ministry of State Security. The others were more concerned.

Jin "told us he had given our names to the police," recalled Zhang Yanhua, the study group member in Tianjin. "We weren't angry; we knew he was trying to protect us. But we were nervous."

In January, Jin lost his job, apparently because of the police pressure. His friends agreed to shut down the New Youth Study Group.

Two months later, Jin visited his high school classmate, Fan Erjun. He was agitated, Fan recalled, and wanted to call an urgent meeting of the study group because he believed police were preparing a wave of arrests.

Fan said the conversation left him shaken. Instead of going to the meeting, he hesitated, then sought advice from a party official at his university whom he considered a mentor. That night, the man summoned Fan to his office. Three agents from the Ministry of State Security were waiting for him.

"I tried to explain everything to them, but I couldn't remember a lot, and they weren't satisfied," Fan said. At 3 a.m., the agents let him go home. But they told him they'd be back.

Four days later, on March 13, 2001, state security agents detained five study group members: Jin Haike, Yang Zili, Xu Wei, Zhang Honghai and Zhang Yanhua. A group of agents also grabbed Yang's wife, Lu Kun, forced her into a small car and took her to one of the ministry's detention houses with her head covered by a cloth bag.

Lu said the agents interrogated her for three days, demanding information about her husband's friends and their activities. When she refused to give them any names, the agents scoffed, she said. "You're in trouble today because of your friends," she quoted one of them as saying. "Your friends betrayed you. They told us everything."

Zhang Yanhua said he was questioned for about 10 hours per day for almost 30 days, and was released. He was held in Tianjin, where he lived and worked, and because the agents focused their questions on whether the group had done anything in that city, he managed to answer without harming his friends.

Huang Haixia was not detained, but she was summoned by university officials to meet with state security agents. She was questioned in three long sessions, and she signed a statement after each. She said the agents repeatedly raised the possibility of a long prison sentence and urged her to consider her academic future.

In her first statement, Huang wrote that the New Youth Study Group wanted to "change China into a better country." But in the second, she said she regretted "staying with these young men who always thought they were right" and "using radical words to attack our nation's leaders." She thanked state security agents "for helping me recognize my mistakes."

In her last statement, signed after six hours of questioning, she wrote: "The New Youth Study Group is an organization that opposes the current socialist system and the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. . . . This organization is illegal. It tried to overthrow the party's rule and shake the leadership and prestige of the party."

State security agents also questioned Fan repeatedly, twice in March and twice in April. The last meeting took place in a city detention center, he said.

"They showed me a transcript of my answers and asked me to sign it," he recalled. "I saw that I had said Yang wanted to change China into a capitalist country and that Zhang Honghai favored a revolution. I did say something like that, but those were just my impressions and I didn't think they should use it as evidence."

He said the transcript also included statements he did not make, such as a line that stated, "Our organization's final goal is to overthrow the Chinese government."

But Fan said he was too afraid to object. "I was in a detention center, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. It felt like they were threatening me," he said. "They kept saying they were a state organ, and that I must cooperate with them or face the consequences."

So he signed the paper.

Facing the Consequences

Li Yuzhou recalled he felt sick when he heard his friends had been arrested. He dialed their numbers, one after another, but couldn't get through to any of them. A day later, he called his supervisor at the Ministry of State Security.

The official confirmed the arrests, and told him to go into hiding for a few days.

"I think he wanted me to know that I had made an important contribution," Li said. "He also tried to comfort me. He said that if we hadn't arrested them, someone else would have. Then he said they would be jailed 15 to 20 years, and when they were released, they wouldn't recognize me anymore. But that only made me feel worse."