Dissident’s Wife Avoids Premier’s Speech

Though she has spent 18 months lobbying the Chinese government for her husband’s release, Christina X. Fu did not come face to face with one of its most powerful leaders when he spoke at Harvard last week.

After hearing indirectly that Chinese officials did not want her to come to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s address at the Harvard Business School, the Harvard Medical School (HMS) researcher said she decided not to attend, hoping to help her husband’s case.

“They said that if I wasn’t there, it would be better for my husband,” she said.

Fu has not seen her husband, pro-democracy activist and former Kennedy School of Government (KSG) student Yang Jianli, since he was imprisoned on espionage charges in April 2002.

Fu declined to reveal who advised her not to attend the speech, but she said she had faxed a letter to the Chinese embassy last Monday requesting a meeting with Wen in order to discuss her husband’s case.

In her letter, Fu wrote that she was pleased Wen was visiting the United States and that her husband was not intending to hurt the Chinese government.

“I told them that we all miss him very much and want him home for Christmas,” she said.

The embassy did not respond to the letter, according to Fu.

But Fu said her letter was not the only sent last week on her husband’s behalf. More than 100 Harvard faculty members from the Law School, HMS and the KSG signed two letters to Wen calling for Yang’s release, she said.

Fu said she met with University President Lawrence H. Summers the week before Wen’s visit, but that she did not know whether Summers discussed her husband’s case with the Chinese premier last week.

Summers could not be reached for comment, but a senior Harvard official said the University had quietly raised concerns about the case with Chinese officials in the days leading up to Wen’s visit.

Summers discussed Yang’s case in closed-door meetings with Chinese officials during his trip to China last year.

Though she didn’t speak directly with Wen, Fu said she is confident that the efforts of the Harvard administration and Congressional officials—who sent a letter to President Bush in October asking that he advocate on Yang’s behalf during his Asian tour—will ultimately succeed.

“That’s much more effective than anything I can do by protesting,” Fu said.

As officials both at Harvard and in the U.S. government continue to lobby for Yang’s release, a verdict is still pending in Yang’s case—which went to trial in August. Fu said a hearing that was supposed to be held Nov. 21 has not taken place, and no new date has been set.

Fu said she and her two children, aged 11 and 8, remain hopeful that her husband will be released soon.

“My son is always asking me how I know daddy will come home,” she said. “I tell him that so many people are praying for dad.”

—Staff writer May Habib can be reached at habib@fas.harvard.edu.