On Wednesday 27 March, a court in Shanghai sentenced Taiwan-based book publisher Li Yanhe (李延賀), known by his pen name Fucha (富察), to three years in prison on charges of ‘inciting secession’. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office announced the sentence on Wednesday following a verdict handed down by the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court in an opaque trial on 17 February. Li Yanhe had been arbitrarily detained in China since 2023. ARTICLE 19 calls on the Chinese government to immediately and unconditionally release Li and allow him to reunite with his family in Taiwan.
Li Yanhe, originally from Liaoning Province in Northeastern China, emigrated to Taiwan in 2009 where he founded Gusa Press, a Chinese-language book publisher specialising in non-fiction titles on China’s overseas influence operations, and sensitive issues such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre. He was also a program host at Radio Taiwan International. He was first detained by Chinese authorities in March 2023 during a visit to Shanghai when he aimed to renounce his Chinese household registration as part of his citizenship naturalisation in Taiwan. China only confirmed in April that he had been detained and since then released very little information publicly, until now.
Following the announcement of the February verdict, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office claimed that the trial had been public. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council refutes Beijing’s claims, highlighting that the Supreme People’s Procuratorate conducted the proceedings secretly.
Li is one of hundreds of Taiwanese nationals to disappear or be arbitrarily detained in the People’s Republic of China. Previously, the most high profile case was Lee Ming-che, a Taiwanese rights advocate who was imprisoned in China for five years on the charge of ‘subversion of state power’. He was released in 2022.
China has engaged in a documented campaign of information manipulation targeting Taiwan and seeking to undermine freedom of expression of Taiwanese people. Last year ARTICLE 19 raised alarm at new guidelines China imposed under the Anti-Secession Law which threaten to impose a maximum potential death penalty for a range of vaguely defined activities supporting ‘Taiwan independence’.
ARTICLE 19 strongly condemns this sentencing as a politically motivated action intended to intimidate Taiwan’s cultural and academic communities and create a chilling effect that suppresses freedom of expression and the right to publish in Taiwan and the wider Chinese speaking world. We urge the international community to stand unequivocally against China’s escalating threats to freedom of expression toward Taiwan.