A Study Group Is Crushed in China's Grip

He grabbed the leg of a table, and it took five or six officers to pry him loose and carry him out of the room. The judge then announced the conviction of all four defendants on subversion charges.

Xu and Jin Haike were sentenced to 10 years in prison. Yang Zili and Zhang Honghai received eight-year sentences. The security officers rushed the three remaining defendants out of the room before they could say anything.

A World of Regret

Several months later, Li Yuzhou studied the reports that had been presented in court. He was wearing a white T-shirt with elephants on front and sitting in a hotel lobby in Bangkok. It appeared he had not shaved in several days.

"I wrote these," he said finally, looking up from the papers. His forehead was creased in a slight frown, but his face betrayed no other emotion. "I have some impression of them."

The first report was the longest. It focused on Xu Wei. It said he had been busy planning a secret organization and believed violence could not be ruled out as an option for political change. It also said that he had concluded Li was "totally trustworthy."

"I can't remember why I wrote this," Li said, his deep voice trailing off. "I didn't know the purpose of the investigation was to arrest these people. . . ."

The second report was shorter. It described a meeting in which six members of the New Youth Study Group were present. The report offered a statement from each one criticizing the Communist Party.

Li dismissed the report as harmless. "Any Chinese citizen can say these things," he said. "Teachers in class say these things, too."

The third report described the first meeting of the New Youth Study Group. It was even shorter, with few details about what was said, though it divided the participants into two groups -- five members who endorsed "violent methods" and two who supported "peaceful methods."

"The Ministry of State Security wasn't satisfied with this report," Li said. "They said it was a big event, and I should add more details. But I never did it because I was lazy. I always tried to write as little as possible."

The fourth report described a meeting in Li's dorm room in which Jin Haike told him the police had been harassing him. Zhang Honghai was there, too, and it quoted him as arguing that they must try to expand their organization.

"I was working for the Ministry of State Security at the time. I had to write these," Li said. Asked if he was deceiving his friends, he said he was only doing his job but added that the ministry had misused the reports. "It would have been okay to use my reports to analyze society, but not as evidence to convict people. . . . What if I was making up the stories?"

Li said personal ambition appeared to drive the Ministry of State Security's decision to arrest his friends. His supervisors wanted to break a big case, justify their budget and win promotions, and no doubt their superiors wanted the same. As a result, Li said, bureaucrats at each level exaggerated his friends' activities, perhaps all the way to the top of the party. When a rival agency, the Ministry of Public Security, began poking around, state security officials decided to move to make sure they got the credit, Li said.

But Li denied his own ambition had driven him to inform on his friends and exaggerate in his reports. Later, asked what he would say to his friends now, he paused before answering. "I never imagined it would hurt them," he said quietly. "I don't want to shift responsibility. I do regret writing these reports. . . . They were used as evidence, and it hurt them, and I'm very sorry."

One More Reunion

They had not seen one another since the arrests. But last October, after months of silence, the three other study group members who escaped arrest mustered the courage to testify at an appeal hearing on their friends' behalf.

Zhang Yanhua was still living in Tianjin. His words had not been used against Yang and the others, but he had done little to stand up for them afterward. He became interested in Christianity, prayed for his friends every day, and agreed to testify when Yang's wife, Lu Kun, tracked him down.

Huang Haixia knew her signed statements had hurt her friends, but had tried to forget them. After the first trial, she wrote a careful letter to the judge at the request of Xu Wei's girlfriend indicating her answers had been "distorted to some extent" by state security officers. Then she moved to Shanghai. Zhang found her there and persuaded her to return to Beijing for the hearing.

Fan Erjun was still a tutor at Beihang University and for months he had been too scared even to ask around about what had happened to his friends. Once, Lu Kun asked to see him, and he put her off, saying he needed time to think. But weeks before the appeal hearing, Yang's lawyer called him and reminded him of the statements he had signed. He was surprised by the harshness of his words, and felt so terrible he agreed to testify, too.

But the court refused to let any of them in. The three sat on the curb and wrote a statement defending their friends and denying the New Youth Study Group ever intended to overthrow the government. The court refused to accept it.

Later, Lu said she had forgiven all three of them. "They're young," she said, "and they were pressured to do what they did."

But she would not forgive Li Yuzhou. She said his actions had been voluntary. "He lied and betrayed his friends, then left the country instead of staying to help them," she said. "He doesn't deserve political asylum. . . . He should come back, even if it means going to jail, because that's where he deserves to be. He should accept responsibility for what he's done."

Once, Li called her from Bangkok and asked her to send him copies of court papers so he could try to help her husband. She replied: "I hate you."

In November 2003, the court rejected the four defendants' appeals.

Lu was allowed to visit her husband for the first time last month, almost exactly three years after he was arrested. His head had been shaved, and he was thin and pale, she said. The couple sat on opposite sides of a glass panel and spoke through telephone handsets, but it was difficult to hear each other because the room was full of other prisoners and visitors.

Lu said she wept, telling her husband that she had finally read his essays, that she understood now why he had insisted on writing them. But Yang did most of the talking. He spoke slowly, expressing sadness about letting his family down. He asked her to visit his parents, and to take good care of herself in his absence.

"He said he had been falsely convicted," Lu said. "And he told me to prepare myself. He said he wouldn't admit he was guilty to get parole."

After only 20 minutes, the telephone line went dead. Their time was up.