The editor-in-chief of a Taiwanese publishing house received a three-year prison sentence after a Chinese court convicted him of inciting separatism, a Chinese government spokesperson said Wednesday.
The case raised concern about the risks of publishing books critical of the Chinese government and system, even outside mainland China.
Li Yanhe is a Chinese citizen who had been living in Taiwan, according to Taiwanese media. He was detained two years ago during a trip to China, and Taiwanese media reported last week that he had been tried and sentenced by a court in Shanghai but gave no details.
The editor was fined 50,000 yuan ($6,900) in addition to the three-year sentence, Chen Binhua, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said at a biweekly news conference on Taiwan-related issues. Li pleaded guilty and did not appeal, he said.
Taiwan and China split in 1949 during the civil war that brought the Communist Party to power in Beijing. The Chinese government claims Taiwan as its territory and says the island must come under its control at some point in the future. It opposes what it views as separatist activity on the island, which is self-governing but has not declared formal independence.
Chinese authorities have not said what Li did to be charged with inciting separatism. Gusa Publishing, where Li worked, has published books on topics that are usually censored in China. The company’s website includes books on corruption and authoritarian rule in China and on the military's bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests that were centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Taiwanese authorities said last week that Li’s detention was in order to “suppress Taiwan’s publishing, academic and cultural industries and attempt to create a chilling effect,” according to Taiwan’s government-owned Central News Agency.
Gusa Publishing, in a statement posted on Facebook, said all of Li's colleagues were “angry and upset,” and couldn’t understand why Li, whom it described as “just a publisher,” would be charged with inciting separatism.
People in the Chinese-language publishing world expressed concern about the fallout from the case. Yu Miao, the owner of a Chinese bookstore in Washington, D.C., said it would have a negative impact on deciding which books to publish in the future.
“It shows it is not safe to publish books about China in Taiwan or anywhere else,” said Yu, who opened the Washington bookstore after his earlier bookstore in Shanghai was forced out in 2018.
In 2015, five Hong Kong-based booksellers were taken away by Chinese authorities, including one who was a Swedish citizen and another who was British. Their case became a symbol of the extent to which China was willing to enforce a hard line on squelching political dissent, extending beyond the borders of mainland China to Hong Kong.
