A Study Group Is Crushed in China's Grip

Li said he was too confused to argue. That night, he told his girlfriend what had happened and wept in his dorm room. In a moment of rage, he burned his arm with a cigarette, leaving a scar to remind him of the pain and guilt he felt.

Within a few days, Li said, he began using a pen name to post appeals on behalf of his friends on the Internet.

But he did not disclose his role in the arrests. Nor did he break off his relationship with the Ministry of State Security. He may have felt guilty, but not enough to join his friends in prison. He said he wanted to find another way to help them.

"It wasn't so simple," Li said, adding that he was frightened of the agents. "I was afraid I wouldn't be able to graduate. They could have arrested me for any reason."

Three weeks later, Li's supervisors at the Ministry of State Security invited him to lunch. During the meal, Li shared a smoke with the agents and didn't challenge their decision to detain his friends. Afterward, they asked him to sign a written statement that was supposed to represent his answers when questioned formally about the case.

"I think the New Youth Study Group was an illegal organization and a political organization," the statement said. "First, it wasn't registered. Second, it had a strong political inclination, which I believe was to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party and replace it with a multi-party system and Western capitalism."

Li signed. He said he didn't study it closely.

A Verdict Is Issued

Six months later, when prosecutors presented their case in court, they relied heavily on the statements signed by Huang Haixia, Fan Erjun and Li Yuzhou.

The four young men spoke in their own defense, according to notes taken by relatives who attended the one-day trial. Dressed in the clothes they wore when they were arrested -- sweatshirts, mostly -- each stood and addressed a panel of three judges.

Zhang Honghai asked how the study group could have overthrown the party when it couldn't even raise enough money to set up a Web site. Xu Wei noted that Communist Party members made up half of the study group. When prosecutors accused Jin Haike of advocating "an end to old man politics," he retorted that Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping had used the same phrase.

And Yang Zili argued that "liberalization of the social system," which prosecutors had accused them of promoting, did not amount to subversion. "Liberalization means expanding the level of freedom in society through reform," he said. "The reforms of the past 20 years, isn't that just a process of liberalization?"

Li Yuzhou had graduated by then. The Ministry of State Security was preparing the paperwork to hire him and had asked him to begin investigating and infiltrating other suspected dissident groups. But he was no longer interested in working for them.

Instead, he embarked on a course of action suggesting how torn he felt about what he had done. Li seemed desperate to help his friends, but also unwilling to accept full responsibility for betraying them, or to sacrifice his own freedom on their behalf.

First, Li wrote a letter to the judge defending his four friends and renouncing his signed statement. But he did not disclose his relationship with the ministry, and he told his supervisor about the letter in advance, arguing that he needed to send it to enhance his credibility in the dissident community, he said.

Later, he contacted Yang's wife, Lu Kun, and met with her at a McDonald's restaurant. He showed her the scar caused by the cigarette burn, but couldn't bring himself to confess his role in her husband's arrest.

He also tried going to China's highest court to seek help for Yang and the others. Again, he did not tell officials about his relationship with the Ministry of State Security. But the ministry quickly discovered what he was doing. While he was at the court, his supervisor called his cell phone and told him to "get back here or you'll be arrested," Li said.

Later that day, a department chief in the ministry took Li to a teahouse and gently warned him not to go too far. "He said, 'We know you feel terrible because your friends have been arrested. Go home and rest,' " Li recalled. "But he also said I was an adult and must be responsible for my actions. . . . He said, 'Don't think we can't catch spies without you.' "

Li refused to do any more work for the ministry. Instead, he began posting essays on the Internet about his four friends using the name of a fake organization, the China Human Rights Party. In May 2002, his supervisor called and asked if he had heard of the group. Li said no. Two days later, the agent called again and recited a phone number. It was his girlfriend's number, the one he had been using to sign on to the Internet.

"He said if I had written those essays, there was nothing he could do to help me," Li recalled. "I knew I was in trouble."

The next month, Li obtained a passport, and with the help of a friend who works at a travel agency, he flew to Thailand on July 8 and applied for refugee status at an office of the United Nations.

On April 20, 2003, more than two years after Yang and the others were first arrested, the judge convened a second hearing to examine new evidence in the case. For the first time, prosecutors presented four handwritten reports submitted by Li Yuzhou while he was working for the Ministry of State Security.

On May 18, 2003, the four defendants were led into a courtroom to hear the verdict. Two security officers stood behind each of them. But before the judge could announce the decision, Xu Wei leaped forward and threw himself on the ground.

"I protest!" witnesses quoted him as shouting. "Beijing State Security beat me! But I won't admit any crime! I won't falsely accuse anyone!"