posted essays on the Internet

China Says It Holds American-Based Dissident on Terrorism Charges
The dissident, Wang Bingzhang, who lives in New York, was arrested in connection with espionage and "violent terrorist activities," said the official New China News Agency, quoting a spokesman from the Ministry of Public Security.

The announcement gave few details of Mr. Wang's supposed crimes, other than to say that he had passed state secrets to Taiwan and posted essays on the Internet related to terrorist acts, which threatened state security.

Such charges are extremely serious here because they are prosecuted under China's state secrets law, which calls for heavy sentences and deprives defendants of virtually all legal rights.

The news agency said Mr. Wang's relatives had not been allowed to see him because the charges were brought under that law.

The news release said Mr. Wang and two other Chinese dissidents had been kidnapped in Vietnam and, on July 3, were found by the police in China's Guangxi Province, where they were being held captive. It did not explain who might have kidnapped them.

Colleagues said the three were in Vietnam to meet with Chinese labor advocates.

The other two members of the group, Yue Wu and Zhang Qi, had been investigated and cleared of any crime, the announcement said.

Since China joined forces in the American-led campaign against terrorism last year, officials here have frequently tried to portray the detention and harsh treatment of a wide range of dissidents on domestic issues as antiterrorist activity, to the dismay of human rights groups.

Mr. Wang, a longtime pro-democracy activist and critic of the Chinese government, went into exile in 1979 and has continued to press for change in China from abroad. In 1998, he used false documents to enter China illegally to lend his support to a fledgling pro-democracy party, the China Democratic Party, which was being organized here.

The announcement comes at the conclusion of a human rights dialogue between China and the United States, held in China this week.

Although the United States normally raises troubling rights cases at such meetings, a spokesman for the American Embassy said it knew little about Mr. Wang's case beyond what was mentioned by the news agencies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/21/international/asia/21CHIN.html