New York Times Researcher Sentenced in China

JEFFREY BROWN:

Two closely watched court rulings have just been handed down by the Chinese justice system. Forty-four-year-old Zhao Yan, a researcher for the New York Times who's been held since 2004, was today cleared of a charge of revealing state secrets. But the same court convicted Zhao of fraud in a separate matter that predated his tenure with the Times. For that, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

Yesterday, a court convicted Chen Guangcheng, a 34-year-old, blind human rights activist who had documented allegations of forced abortions in villages around China. He was sentenced to four years, three months in prison, on charges of destroying property and organizing a mob.

And joining me to look at these cases is James Feinerman, professor of Asian legal studies at Georgetown University. He's just returned from a five- month Fulbright scholarship in China.

Welcome to you.

First, tell us about the case of Mr. Zhao. Remind us, this happened because of an article that appeared in the New York Times?

JAMES FEINERMAN, Georgetown University:

The article appeared in the New York Times in 2004, and it predicted correctly that the former leader of China, Jiang Zemin, was going to hand down the last of his three important positions to his successor, Hu Jintao, the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission. And for revealing that, Zhao was charged with violating China's state secrets law.

JEFFREY BROWN:

So the story turned out to be right but it got people upset?

JAMES FEINERMAN:

That's correct. And apparently what was even more upsetting than just the report that he was turning over that position was some additional commentary about the fact that there was a struggle about how it would be handed over and what exactly the succession plans would be, that they were more worried about the contention of the top leadership getting out than just the story that he was handing over the position.

JEFFREY BROWN:

The case went through various twists and turns. At one point, the charges were dropped, reinstated.

JAMES FEINERMAN:

Yes, well, first of all, an additional charge was added sometime after the original charge of violating the state secrets law of fraud. And the fraud that was alleged was something that was supposedly committed by Zhao before he joined the New York Times' Beijing bureau, when he was a crusading Chinese journalist, and accused of promising to help somebody in a case or a suit that they had by fabricating a story and helping him avoid a possible sentence to the Chinese prison labor camps.

And those charges were subsequently dropped, just shortly before the case then went to trial. They were reinstated. The case went to trial a couple of months ago, and the decision just came down today in China.