Dong Yuyu is among a shrinking group of Chinese intellectuals active in international liberal circles. A former Chinese state media journalist, he was sentenced on Friday to seven years in prison for espionage, his family confirmed to the BBC.
Dong Yuyu, 62, who has been detained since 2022, was active in academic and journalism circles in the US and Japan and met regularly with foreign diplomats. He was arrested by police while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat in Beijing.
At the time of his detention, Dong was a senior staff member of the Guangming Daily, one of the five major newspapers linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
In February 2022, Dong was arrested while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat the day after the Winter Olympics ended in Beijing, at a restaurant where he had frequently met foreign friends. The diplomat was also detained but released several hours later amid protests from the Japanese government.
Dong regularly met with other journalists and foreign diplomats as part of his job. His family said in a statement that, according to the court judgment, two other Japanese diplomats Dong had met with were named as “agents of an espionage organization,” referring to the Japanese embassy.
“We are shocked that the Chinese authorities would blatantly deem a foreign embassy an ‘espionage organization,'” said his family’s statement.
“Today’s verdict is a grave injustice not only to Yuyu and his family but also to every freethinking Chinese journalist and every ordinary Chinese committed to friendly engagement with the world,” they added.
The Beijing court where Dong was sentenced on Friday had a strong security presence, Reuters reported, as journalists were asked to leave, and a diplomat said they were not allowed to attend the hearing.
“In the past, the Chinese court system has chosen Western holidays to release news, as it is a time when the public is focused on other matters,” the US National Press Club said in a statement on Tuesday, ahead of Dong’s sentencing on Thanksgiving night in the US.
While Dong’s trial had been completed in July 2023, he had been held without a verdict and was barred from seeing his family, according to the press club.
Rights groups and advocates have criticized his conviction and called for his release.
“Chinese authorities must reverse this unjust verdict and protect the right of journalists to work freely and safely in China,” Beh Lih Yi, Asia program manager at the Committee to Protect Journalists, told Reuters. “Dong Yuyu should be reunited with his family immediately.”
Dong joined the Guangming Daily after graduating from Peking University’s law school in 1987. In 1989, he was one of the tens of thousands of students who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests. He was later sentenced to hard labor but kept his job at the newspaper, according to a family statement.
He eventually rose to become deputy head of the editorial department and was one of the most pro-reform voices at Guangming Daily, the statement added.
A Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 2007, Dong had also written several articles for The New York Times and was previously a visiting fellow and professor at several Japanese universities.
