China has detained one of its citizens on spying charges after she did some work for a US company, in a case that experts say highlights the potential risks of working for foreign businesses in the country.
Emily Chen, 50, disappeared after flying into Nanjing Lukou international airport in December on a visit from Doha, where she lives.
According to her husband, US citizen Mark Lent, Chen messaged her family to say that she had landed but she then did not emerge from the airport. Four days later, her son received a letter from the national security bureau in Dalian, a city more than 570 miles away, saying that she had been detained on 30 December on suspicion of illegally providing state secrets to overseas parties – a charge that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years, or longer for more serious cases.
Few details have been given about the specific reasons for Chen’s detention. Reached by the Guardian, Dalian’s national security bureau declined to comment. But Lent, a photography teacher who married Chen in China in 2016, said Chen had only one connection to Dalian: last year, she spent four months helping a US logistics company open an office there.
Chen “would never, ever spy on her own country”, said Lent, who is now trying to raise money for his wife’s legal fees and for their family’s living costs. He has not been able to contact her since she was taken into detention. “My wife was just an innocent bystander.”
Chen’s son, a Chinese citizen from a previous relationship, was barred from leaving the country last week when he attempted to board a flight in Shanghai.
Between January and April 2023, Chen worked on a freelance basis for Safe Ports, a US logistics company that describes itself as “a global leader in supply chain management”. Lucy Duncan, Safe Ports’ founder and CEO, said the company was looking to open an office in Dalian to expand its business, offering green technology solutions to seaports. Duncan described Chen’s work for the company as “purely administrative”, including tasks such as looking for an office space. “She did a beautiful job,” Duncan said, adding: “I have no idea as to why she has been detained.”
Safe Ports ultimately decided not to proceed with the project in Dalian, in part because Chen took a full-time job with a French energy company in Doha. Duncan also concluded that the deteriorating environment for foreigners meant that “it is impossible to do business in China”.
There has been no official confirmation that Chen’s detention is linked to her work for Safe Ports. But Dalian, a port city in northern China, is home to an important naval base, which would make any inquiries regarding ports in that area a sensitive matter. That is particularly the case under the Chinese Communist party’s military-civil fusion strategy, which aims to leverage civilian infrastructure to support military development.
Safe Ports has previously worked with the US department of defence, for example helping to supply troops in Afghanistan. This association may have drawn attention from the Chinese authorities.
Last year, China expanded its counter-espionage law, broadening the definition of espionage to cover any “documents, data, materials or items related to national security”. However, Chen is under investigation for spying offences that were already part of China’s criminal code.
Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said the vagueness of charges added to concerns about alleged spying cases. “Whether it is fair or not, [such cases] are going to make a lot of Chinese think twice about working for foreign companies.”
Chen is being held under a type of detention known as residential surveillance at a designated location, or RSDL. RSDL allows the authorities to hold an individual for up to six months without access to a lawyer, their family, or the opportunity to appeal. They are often held in solitary confinement. UN human rights experts describe it “as form of enforced disappearance” which “puts individuals at heightened risk of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
Chen is not known to have been formally charged with any offence, as is common in RSDL cases.
Peter Dahlin, the director of Safeguard Defenders, an NGO that has researched RSDL, said its use “tends to mean that the police considers it a more difficult case, that it concerns espionage or national security crimes, or that the person is being persecuted on political grounds”.
Lent said the US embassy had refused to help him, on the grounds that his wife was not a US citizen. A spokesperson for the US embassy said they had “nothing to share” about the case.
Lent now believes that “nothing short of a miracle will save us”. He said he has asked a lawyer in China to request a photograph of Chen to prove that she is safe, but to no avail. “It’s not like I’m trying to break her out, because I don’t even know where she is.”
