MCLC: engineer in limbo

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: engineer in limbo
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (11/26/11):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/world/returning-to-china-engineer-finds-j
ail-and-then-limbo.html

Engineer¹s Return to China Leads to Jail and Limbo
By ANDREW JACOBS

BEIJING ‹ After two decades of working as a successful engineer in the
United States, Hu Zhicheng decided to return to China in 2004 and apply
his rich experience to designing catalytic converters for the nation¹s
booming automotive industry.

³I saw how polluted the air was here, and thought I could make a
difference,² said Mr. Hu, a naturalized American citizen who has a
doctorate in engineering.

Now it seems he cannot leave.

The last three times he tried to board an airplane and return to his
family in Los Angeles, Mr. Hu, 49, was turned away by Chinese border
agents who claimed that he was a wanted man.

The problem is, he cannot find out exactly who wants him and why.

Mr. Hu, an inventor trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
with 48 patents and a number of prestigious science awards to his name,
was jailed for a year and a half starting in 2008 after a former business
associate accused him of commercial theft. The charges were so spurious
that prosecutors withdrew the case ‹ a rare gesture in China¹s top-down
legal system.

But since his release 19 months ago, Mr. Hu¹s life has been in limbo and
his family has grown increasingly frantic. He writes to powerful Communist
Party officials who he imagines might control his fate. A coterie of
influential friends and colleagues has been lobbying on his behalf. And
this month, his daughter, a sophomore at the University of California,
Berkeley, began a petition campaign
<http://www.change.org/petitions/help-my-father-dr-zhicheng-hu-come-home>
that has garnered more than 50,000 signatures.

Richard Buangan, a spokesman for the United States Embassy in Beijing,
said that American diplomats had had little success in pressing his case
with Chinese officials. ³No authority has been cooperative with our
request for information on the restrictions that block his departure from
China,² he said.

Mr. Hu¹s predicament highlights the potential perils of doing business in
China, where commercial disputes can easily become criminal matters,
especially when the politically well-connected use the country¹s malleable
legal system to bludgeon rivals. Most worrisome, legal experts say, are
the country¹s vague commercial secrets laws that state-owned enterprises ‹
the companies that dominate China¹s economy ‹ sometimes wield to protect
information related to production, procurement, mergers and strategic
planning.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that overseas Chinese are more vulnerable to
such abuses than their non-Chinese compatriots. Last year, Stern Hu, a
Chinese-Australian mining executive, was detained shortly after a deal
between his company, Rio Tinto, and the state-owned Aluminum Corporation
of China fell through. Convicted of stealing trade secrets and bribery,
Mr. Hu was sentenced to 10 years in prison after a largely closed trial.

Xue Feng, a Chinese-American geologist who is serving eight years in
prison on similar charges, said he was tortured during his interrogation.
His supporters, including American diplomats, insist that the oil and gas
industry data he sold was publicly available. In 2008,the authorities
executed Wo Weihan, a Chinese biomedical researcher who had returned from
Europe to start a medical supply company in Beijing. Tried in secret, Mr.
Wo was accused of espionage, although the details of his crimes were never
disclosed.

Even as official policies seek to lure Chinese-born inventors, academics
and entrepreneurs with housing perks and financial incentives, lingering
anti-Western xenophobia nurtured during the Mao years sometimes taints
them as unpatriotic for having left. ³It¹s kind of reverse racism,² said
John Kamm, executive director of Dui Hua
<http://www.duihua.org/about/jk_bio.htm>, an American human rights group
that frequently advocates on behalf of detained foreign nationals in
China. ³If you¹re ethnic Chinese with a foreign passport, you¹re really
not considered a foreigner.²

Mr. Hu, whose long résumé includes stints as a researcher in Japan and
more than a decade working for an American designer of catalytic
converters, the Engelhard Corporation, would seem to be the ideal returnee.

In 2006, when he took a job as chief scientist for Wuxi Weifu
Environmental Catalysts, a company in eastern Jiangsu Province, he also
brought his wife and their two American-born children, in part, he says,
because he wanted them to become steeped in Chinese language and culture.

His return coincided with a surge in domestic car production and
government-led efforts to reduce tailpipe emissions. The company
prospered, and so did Mr. Hu, who eventually became Wuxi Weifu¹s
president. It now provides catalytic converters for half of all
Chinese-made cars.

Mr. Hu¹s troubles began after his company refused to buy components from
the Hysci Specialty Materials Company, which is based in Tianjin and once
supplied Engelhard.

According to Mr. Hu and his lawyers, Hysci would not take no for an
answer. They say Hysci¹s well-connected chief executive, Dou Shihua, sent
Tianjin public security agents to Wuxi Weifu to pressure Mr. Hu to change
his mind.

The police raised allegations of stolen trade secrets but also suggested
that the accusations would evaporate if the two companies did business
together. Mr. Hu would not budge. ³We have a system of quality control,
and even one word from me could not change that,² he said.

In the end, the veiled threats gave way to an arrest, and Mr. Hu was put
in a jail in Tianjin.

The patent infringement case that prosecutors eventually built against him
cited technology that has been publicly available in the United States for
decades, according to several scientists who rallied to his defense.

But even after prosecutors withdrew the case and Mr. Hu was freed, he
found his return home blocked by immigration officials who claimed that he
was still wanted by the Tianjin police. Each time he or his lawyer
contacted the authorities there, however, they were told there were no
such restrictions.

One of his lawyers, Wang Shou, said he believed that Mr. Dou, Hysci¹s
chief executive, was continuing to use his influence to exact revenge or
get a deal yet.

Reached by telephone, a sales executive at Hysci refused to comment on the
case. The Tianjin Public Security Bureau hung up before answering
questions about Mr. Hu.

His family does not know what else to do. Although his daughter visited
last summer, Mr. Hu¹s wife and 16-year-old son are reluctant to come here,
saying they fear they, too, could be prevented from leaving.

³I worry about my husband every hour of every day,² his wife, Hong Li, who
is also an engineer, said by telephone from Los Angeles. ³I don¹t want my
son to grow up without a father.²

The emotional anguish suffered by Mr. Hu has been compounded by pain from
a herniated disc that worsened during the 17 months he slept on the floor
of his jail cell.

Earlier this month, at a chemical engineering conference on the outskirts
of Beijing, he lectured about ways to reduce emissions from heavy trucks
in China.

As the conference wound down and his American colleagues headed to the
airport, he made a joke about escaping across the border.

³If I could only invent something that would make me invisible,² he said.