Who is Yang Hengjun, sentenced to death in China?

Human rights dissident, pro-democracy blogger, Chinese government official, daigou entrepreneur. Dr Yang Hengjun has had many different lives throughout his decades in China, Australia, and the United States.

On Monday, the father-of-two was given a suspended death sentence by a Beijing court for espionage. The sentence effectively means the graduate of the University of Technology Sydney will spend the rest of his life behind bars and could be executed by lethal injection if he breaches a two-year good-behaviour period.

Chinese-Australian academic, writer, entrepreneur and blogger Yang Hengjun.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

Who is Yang Hengjun?

Yang, 57, migrated to Australia in 1998 after leaving the Chinese government where he worked with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of State Security.

“In Dad’s words, he wanted us to be brought up in the most beautiful country in the world, where the rule of law is strong and human rights are guaranteed,” Yang’s sons said in a letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last year.

In 2005, he began a PhD at UTS on the impact of internet bloggers on democratisation in China.

“Yang abandoned his career as a communist cadre to embrace freedom and democracy in his middle age,” said Dr Feng Chongyi, Yang’s supervisor and friend at UTS.

Yang not only studied bloggers but became a prolific “pro-democracy pedlar” himself, publishing more than 10 million words online on the merits of constitutional democracy. In his spare time, he wrote a trilogy of spy novels about a Chinese-US double agent. They did not bring him commercial success, but they did bring him to the attention of Chinese authorities. The books were banned in China in 2015.

By 2017, Yang had won a position as a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York. But his new life in the US also saw him gradually shift away from academia towards a more profitable career as a Chinese buyer’s agent or daigou.

Just before his arrest, he had successfully pivoted from selling ideas to selling clothes, pharmaceuticals and other products from the US to consumers hungry for foreign goods in China.

Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun.Credit: AP

What was he charged with?

Yang was arrested at Guangzhou airport in 2019 after arriving with his wife from their home in New York. Yang was charged with espionage for an unnamed country and the exact claims against him remain shrouded in secrecy.

China’s opaque judicial system means national security trials are heard behind closed doors, leaving both the Australian government and Yang’s supporters unaware of what crimes he is alleged to have committed. Yang’s family and the Australian government have denied all espionage charges against him.

The lack of information has fuelled suggestions that he has been targeted for his outspoken criticism of the Chinese government. Yang was arrested a year before China-Australia tensions peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic. But his detention did follow an increase in hostility between the two countries that culminated in the Turnbull government introducing anti-foreign interference laws and banning Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from Australia’s 5G network.

Yang Hengjun’s Weibo post about selling clothes in 2017. “Good morning, everyone, let me tell you good news! I grabbed 10 orange-red hard-shell jackets that had been short in size early this morning!”

How is he coping?

Yang’s health has deteriorated rapidly in his five years in jail, which have also been marked by allegations of torture and isolation.

Consular reports by Australian officials last year said Yang had trouble standing and had collapsed several times. Chinese doctors treating Yang in jail identified a 10-centimetre cyst on one of his kidneys but maintained he was in otherwise good health, prescribing three vitamin pills and egg in addition to his daily diet. Yang’s family have long feared he will die in jail through a lack of medical treatment.

For his first four years in jail, Yang was regularly subjected to brutal interrogations and denied writing and reading materials while being isolated due to COVID restrictions.

How is his case different to Cheng Lei’s?

Both Yang and journalist Cheng Lei, who was released from a Chinese prison in October, were born in China and naturalised as Australian citizens. This means that the Chinese justice system is more likely to regard them as Chinese citizens and treat them more severely for any alleged crimes.

But Yang’s past working inside the Chinese government has put him at the highest threshold for punishment because of the way the system treats those who have deserted the country and the Chinese Communist Party.

Australian authorities have always separated Yang and Cheng’s cases throughout their negotiations with Beijing. Cheng, a TV anchor, was jailed over breaking a media embargo by just a few minutes. The Australians were never optimistic that Yang would be released at the same time as the Melbourne mother-of-two. Now their worst fears have been realised.

What are the implications for the Australia-China relationship?

Yang’s sentence is a devastating blow for Yang’s family and his supporters. It is also a major setback for Australia-China relations after a year of steadily improving ties. Yang’s case will now dominate every interaction between the leaders of the two countries, including any visit later this year by Premier Li Qiang.

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