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Red fear in Hong
Kong
By Janus Lam
HONG
KONG - Ching Cheong, the Hong Kong-based
correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times who
has been detained by Chinese anti-spy authorities
since late April, is possibly only one among
hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Hong Kong
who could be picked up at any time by Chinese
authorities.
According to the Hong Kong
Journalists' Association, this week Chinese
security officials told Ching's wife that he was
being held under house arrest in Beijing.
On May 31, China's Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (MFA) had made a brief statement over
Ching's arrest. "Ching Cheong is a permanent
resident of Hong Kong. He was detained under an
espionage investigation on April 22 and he has
already confessed that he was paid by an
outside-territory intelligence agency to collect
information," said Kong Quan, an MFA spokesman.
The term "outside-territory" by definition
refers to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, which are
individual tariff zones (special administrative
regions) separate from mainland China. As far as
espionage is concerned, it singly means Taiwan,
which is considered a renegade province by
Beijing.
China has yet to divulge detailed
information on the charges to be leveled against
Ching. The two seemingly most learned theories
floating around suggest that he was picked up
either because he was too interested in the
manuscripts of a disgraced Communist Party chief,
or he was too careless in receiving rewards for
his untold services.
Ever since news of
Ching's detention was first heard in late May,
there has been much talk of the manuscripts of
Zhao Ziyang. Zhao was the late, disgraced
secretary general of the ruling Chinese Communist
Party. He was unseated for expressing sympathy
toward the student-led demonstrations of 1989 that
ended in bloodshed at Tiananmen Square. Zhao
opposed the party caucus' decision to crush by
force what Beijing condemned the
"counter-revolutionary rebellion" at the time, and
had been held under house arrest until he passed
away on January 17 this year.
According to
Ching's wife, Mary Lau, her husband was trapped.
In mid-April, Ching received a phone call from a
mainland source who volunteered to offer him a
batch of manuscripts of unpublished interviews
with Zhao, but he was then apprehended on arrival
in Guangzhou, just across the border from Hong
Kong in China.
A source within the Hong
Kong publishing industry, who deals with topics on
China's politics, gave more detail on the frame-up
theory to Asia Times Online.
The call
Ching responded to, said the source, was from
Huang Wei, a woman who assisted in the publishing
of a memoir by Zong Fengming, the qigong
(breathing exercises) mentor of Zhao. The memoir
provides a genuine account of talks between Zhao
and Zong on politics, both domestically and
abroad, over the past 15 years. As soon as the
book was published in Hong Kong, Huang was held
under investigation, but was set free after a
month. She has since shied away from friends and
the press, except possibly Ching.
The
Chinese version of Asia Times Online reported the
above account last week, without naming Huang.
Within two days, Huang re-emerged to resume her
contacts with friends, denying any part in Ching's
fate, albeit confirming that she had met Ching two
days prior to his arrest. Efforts to contact her,
however, have been in vain.
At about the
same time that Huang came out to disassociate
herself from the incident, Ching's wife brought up
another theory in an open letter to Hu Jintao, the
current Communist Party chief.
In the
letter, Mary Lau said Ching had for a couple of
years been working with Lu Jianhua, a renowned
Chinese TV commentator and social sciences
researcher. Lau said the pair had gauged public
opinion in Hong Kong to help Hu's private office
devise Beijing's new policies toward Hong Kong and
Taiwan. In gratitude for Ching's participation, Lu
gave Ching computer records of internal speeches
made by Hu.
"My husband stored the
internal speeches in his notebook [computer], and
that has now been ascribed as proof of him
spying," said Lau in her open letter.
If
that is the case, according to a veteran Hong
Kong-based editor, hundreds, if not thousands of
Hong Kong people are open to arrest by Chinese
authorities at any time. It is an open secret in
Hong Kong that a large number of residents -
journalists, academics, politicians, merchants,
etc - are in frequent contact with China's state
security agents every day or week.
Most of
the contacts are for the agents to collect views
expressed by Hong Kong people from different walks
of life. Some of the contacts in fact are to pry
on sectors of the community, such as political
parties or big enterprises, to find out if they
have anything to hide from Beijing. Few of these
contacts are without a promise of reward. Some
rewards may be business opportunities or
conveniences. As for journalists, they are fed
from time to time with information worth a
front-page headline.
The danger is that
such a headline could then be used as proof of
espionage. Of course, any detention would be
carried out by another team of state agents.
Incidentally, this correspondent had tea
with Ching last year during which he confirmed
that he was among one of those in frequent contact
with state security agents. They would mostly
exchange views on current issues, according to
Ching. He then subtly acknowledged that every move
he made in mainland China was presumed to be under
watch.
This senior journalist who took for
granted that he was being watched is now being
accused of spying. Ching, 55, a Hong Kong resident
who holds a British National Overseas passport and
is a Singapore permanent resident, started his
journalism career in Hong Kong more than 30 years
ago as a junior reporter at the pro-Beijing Wen
Wei Po. He was at one time a Beijing-based
correspondent, and then promoted to vice
editor-in-chief. In protest to the Tiananmen
crackdown of 1989, he joined a mass resignation
and founded a news magazine, on a shoestring
budget. Afterward, he was hired by the Straits
Times.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for
information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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