‘TAIWAN INDEPENDENCE’:
The Gusa Press editor-in-chief was arrested when he returned to Shanghai in 2023 to cancel his household registration
By Chen Yu-fu and William Hetherington / Staff reporter, with staff writer
Gusa Press editor-in-chief Li Yanhe (李延賀) is due to be released from prison in China this month, although he might not be able to return to Taiwan immediately, a source said on Sunday. Li, better known by his pen name, Fucha (富察), was born in China’s Liaoning Province and obtained Taiwanese citizenship after living in Taiwan since 2009. He returned to Shanghai in March 2023 to cancel his household registration, but was arrested by police for allegedly “endangering national security,” and has since been detained in an unknown location. Gusa Publishing has released numerous books that contradicted the Chinese Communist Party’s historical narrative and ideology.
Gusa Press editor-in-chief Li Yanhe is pictured in an undated screen grab from a post on Chinese poet Bei Lin’s Facebook page.
Photo: Screen grab from Facebook
In February last year, the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Li to three years in prison, deprivation of his political rights for one year and confiscation of 50,000 yuan (US$7,352) in personal assets for “inciting secession.”During China’s annual “two sessions” in March, reports by the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate cited Li’s case, saying authorities had “implemented the Anti-Secession Law and severely punished a die-hard Taiwanese independence advocate.”
Li had been convicted and sentenced according to law for inciting secession and undermining national unity, the reports said. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Chen Binhua (陳斌華) previously said that Li had “clearly committed crimes of inciting secession and undermining national unity,” that he had pleaded guilty in court, and that authorities would handle related matters according to law. A source familiar with the matter said Chinese authorities had identified more than 100 allegedly “problematic books” published by Gusa, but had used only five titles to secure Li’s three-year sentence. As such, Li’s family has deliberately kept a low-profile and do not want details of the case to be widely known, the source said. The more than three years Li has already spent in detention counted toward his sentence, meaning he is expected to be released this month, the source said. However, the one-year deprivation of political rights could allow Chinese authorities to restrict his ability to leave the country at any time, raising the possibility that he might not be able to return directly to Taiwan, they said, adding supporters hoped the additional penalty would not be enforced. The source criticized Chinese authorities for citing Li’s case as an example of undermining national unity, saying the charge had been arbitrarily imposed and reflected Beijing’s lack of regard for human rights and rule of law compared with Western democracies. Asked about Li’s case, the Mainland Affairs Council on Sunday said that the government has kept abreast of developments in the case and provided the family with assistance. It did not disclose further details out of respect for the family’s wishes. Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation said it would handle the case in accordance with government instructions and the family’s needs.