DR XU ZERONG (DAVID TSUI) - MEDIA COVERAGE

FROM: The Chronicle of Higher Education, 29th September 2006

China Reduces Imprisoned Scholar's Sentence, Raising Hopes of Early Parole

By Paul Mooney

A Chinese court has approved a nine-month reduction in the sentence for a Western-educated academic convicted of stealing state secrets, a human-rights foundation announced on Tuesday.

Xu Zerong, who has been detained since his arrest in 2000, was found guilty in 2001 of illegally passing state secrets abroad and of engaging in an illegal business activity, and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Following the sentence reduction, made public by the San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation, Mr. Xu's scheduled release date is September 23, 2012.

He could, however, become eligible for parole as soon as the end of this year, said an official at the foundation, which advocates for human rights in China.

A political scientist educated at Harvard University and the University of Oxford, Mr. Xu wrote his dissertation at Oxford on China's role in the Korean War. He was a senior research fellow at the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences in Guangzhou at the time of his arrest.

The Chinese accused Mr. Xu of collecting and photocopying secret documents related to China's military tactics during that conflict, and providing copies of those documents to a South Korean scholar.

Mr. Xu said at his trial that he believed that the initial classification of those documents had expired after 40 years, but Chinese military officials testified that the documents were "top secret" materials that had never been declassified.

Steve Tsang, a professor of politics at Oxford's St. Antony's College, said in a telephone interview that at least one of the five volumes from which Mr. Xu was accused of taking classified information could be found in an overseas library stamped with the words "internal document." He said this implied that the material was not classified as a state secret and was in the public domain.

Mr. Tsang said that St. Antony's College was committed to doing whatever it could legally to get an early release for Mr. Xu. "We can't accept that one of our students has been incarcerated for 13 years for writing his doctoral dissertation here at Oxford," he said.

"Xu's case illustrates the chilling effect of China's vague laws on state secrecy on academic research," Joshua Rosenzweig, manager of research and publications for the Dui Hua Foundation, said in the news release. "When the authorities can retroactively classify decades-old documents as 'top secret,' it forces scholars to shy away from publishing any subject that might be remotely considered sensitive."

John Kamm, director of the Dui Hua Foundation, said in an e-mail message that Mr. Xu is approaching the midpoint in his 13-year sentence in December, when he will be eligible for parole due to good behavior.

"Having a court grant a sentence reduction for good behavior a few months before reaching the midpoint is a good thing, though no guarantee that good-behavior parole will be granted," said Mr. Kamm.

Family members are also applying for a medical parole for Mr. Xu, who is said to be suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure.