Press Freedom Center at National Press Club Releases Dong Family Statement on Appeal of Conviction of Journalist Dong Yuyu

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Mar 31, 2025, 18:28 ET

WASHINGTON, March 31, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Following is a statement from Mike Balsamo, President of the National Press Club:

Today the Beijing High Court heard the appeal of journalist Yuyu Dong. The Dong family has asked us to release their statement below to media. We stand by Mr. Dong and we call for his immediate release. He has done nothing wrong.

In China, most criminal appeals are decided by filings only, without an appearance in court by the defendant. Under China's criminal procedure law, only appeals involving the death penalty or significant disputes over facts and evidence with a chance at an acquittal or reduction in sentencing warrant a hearing in court. By offering a court session for Yuyu's appeal, the Chinese authorities showed a willingness to reconsider Yuyu's wrongful verdict at trial from last November.

The initial judgment against Yuyu is an embarrassment for China's justice system and China as a nation – that is why the lower court refused to provide a copy of the judgment to Yuyu's family and why China's state media, usually eager to report on convictions in espionage cases, fell completely silent after Yuyu's wrongful verdict for espionage without providing any details about his case.

Instead, slanderous falsehoods about Yuyu have flooded China's internet. False biographical details about Yuyu and baseless accusations against Yuyu of spying for the U.S. and Japan, along with attacks on our family, were ubiquitous on China's social media and short video platforms. Such falsehoods are illegal under Chinese laws and regulations. We call on the Chinese internet companies hosting these falsehoods to clean up the illegal contents or risk facing legal consequences.

After his conviction, Yuyu revealed to us, via his lawyers (because Yuyu has not been allowed to meet with any of his family members for over three years), that he faced great duress under interrogation. The interrogators, officers from China's Ministry of State Security, engaged in conduct that violated China's criminal procedure law while piecing together their evidence against Yuyu. Even so, the evidence against Yuyu cannot logically prove a charge of espionage under Chinese law. Any argument for guilt is absurd.

Our family learned of some details of Yuyu's case from the verdict session in November. Below are some major points of dispute, all pointing to Yuyu's innocence under Chinese law.

First, the prosecution offered no meaningful evidence of material benefit. In other words, all the evidence suggests that Yuyu had absolutely no motive to engage in espionage. No evidence pointed to any form of monetary benefit for Yuyu. Yuyu's only rewards were a signed lunch menu and a photograph from the former Japanese ambassador, Hideo Tarumi. Both items were confiscated by the Chinese authorities. The prosecution also argued that Yuyu received fellowships in the U.S. and Japan, including the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, as benefits for engaging in espionage. Such an argument puts all Chinese scholars with past foreign fellowships in danger and will have a chilling effect on China's people-to-people exchange with foreign countries.

Second, the Ministry of State Security's determination that the eight Japanese diplomats with whom Yuyu met over the past two decades were agents of espionage organization is arbitrary and self-contradictory. This determination is necessary for proving the charge of espionage, but it was not accompanied by any explanation, and the lower court accepted the determination without probing the reasoning behind it, abandoning its duty of judicial review. Despite the determination, the Chinese government never moved to expel the eight named diplomats in the judgment, including former Japanese ambassador to China, Hideo Tarumi, and Japan's current chief diplomat in Shanghai, Masaru Okada. If those diplomats were indeed spies, why didn't the Chinese government expel them? Either the determination by the Ministry of State Security is completely wrong and Yuyu is innocent, or the determination is right, which indicates that the Chinese government is embarrassing itself by allowing those whom it deems as spies to continue working in China. After the judgment came out, the Japanese government has denied the determination by China's Ministry of State Security. The current Japanese ambassador to China, Kenji Kanasugi, formally disputed the determination in a letter to Yuyu's family members with the ambassador's own signature and the seal of the Japanese Embassy in China. Yuyu and his lawyers used the ambassador's letter as a piece of evidence on appeal to rebut the Ministry of State Security's determination.

Allowing the arbitrary determination to stand will have negative consequences. First, it will offend the Chinese people because the Chinese government is allowing foreign diplomats who are considered spies to keep working in China. Second, it will senselessly damage Sino-Japanese relations. Third, this determination signals to other countries' diplomats in China that they, too, can be arbitrarily labeled "spies" by China's Ministry of State Security for the purpose of prosecuting Chinese citizens they interact with. The Chinese government has always welcomed people-to-people diplomacy, but this determination will deter many foreign visitors from engaging with ordinary Chinese people. At a time when China is trying to attract more foreign visitors and investors, upholding such an arbitrary determination by the Ministry of State Security is extremely counterproductive to the Chinese government's policies and objectives.

Third, the crime of espionage under Chinese law requires the government to prove that the defendant "knowingly" engaged in espionage. Here, if it took China's Ministry of State Security more than two decades—the timeframe specified in the judgment during which Yuyu met with the eight Japanese diplomats—to discover that those diplomats are spies, and if the former Japanese ambassador and other top diplomats, whom China welcomed and never tried to expel, are spies, then how should an ordinary person like Yuyu know that those diplomats are spies when he met with them? The prosecution argued that some Japanese diplomats' name cards contained the word 情報 in Japanese. The word means "intelligence" in Chinese but more commonly refers to "information" in Japanese. Which countries' intelligence officers indicate that they are spies on their name cards? The prosecution's argument here is extremely illogical.

Fourth, the prosecution fails to specify what harm Yuyu has done to China's national security because no such harm ever exists. Unlike other espionage cases in China where the government can point to the type of sensitive secrets leaked by the defendants, Yuyu's case does not involve any sensitive secret. Because Yuyu was never a Communist Party member, he had no access to any state secret, that is, in the conventional sense of the term. The so-called state secret in Yuyu's case, arbitrarily determined by the government, likely involves information that was already public, such as news stories that Yuyu often discussed with foreign journalists and diplomats. Even if Yuyu brought up a "secret" news story, no harm was ever done to China's national security, and such an act is not a crime under Chinese law. (Accordingly Yuyu's lawyers, revealing one piece of so-called "secret" does not constitute the crime of leaking state secrets under Chinese law.)

Throughout his detention, Yuyu has fully cooperated with officers from the Ministry of State Security in their investigation. Yuyu respects and supports the Ministry of State Security's stated purpose of keeping China secure from foreign and hostile forces. But as China advances on the global stage, the Chinese government and our fellow countrymen must understand that not all that is foreign is hostile. Now the investigation is over and the conclusion is clear: Yuyu is not guilty of any crime under Chinese law.

Acquitting Yuyu will correct a mistake and mitigate the harm done to Yuyu and our family during his detention. Mistakes are difficult to admit but they are forgivable.

Keeping Yuyu's guilty verdict will erase China's gestures of openness and friendliness toward the outside world. The Beijing High Court should not embrace an error that abuses the people's trust in China's justice system, effectively ends China's official promotion of people-to-people diplomacy, and irreparably damages China's international image.