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Campaign to Free Jude Shao Gathers Force
August, 2003 by Janet Zich Jailed in China since 1998 on charges of tax evasion, a GSB graduate receives support from classmates and growing national media attention.Jude Shao couldn't make it to his 10th-year reunion. Shao, MBA '93, is confined in Qing Pu Prison near Shanghai, where he is serving a 16-year sentence for two tax-related offenses, crimes Shao hotly denies committing. At the May reunion his classmates vowed to find a way to free him. They were advised by John Kamm, founder and director of the Dui Hua Foundation, which has successfully intervened on behalf of hundreds of prisoners in China—mostly Chinese nationals deprived of their political or religious rights, but increasingly foreigners charged with business-related crimes. Kamm [see sidebar] recently added Shao to the list of prisoners he discusses quarterly with the Chinese government and also was instrumental in putting Shao on the U.S. government's prisoner list. Shortly after graduation, with the backing of 16 investors, most of them MBA classmates, Shao established the American company China Business Ventures (CBV), which exported American medical equipment to China. By July 1997, the company had an office in San Francisco and a subsidiary in Shanghai, where CBV employed 15 people. Business seemed to be going smoothly until the Shanghai office was surprised by a "special tax audit." The auditors pounced on 53 invoices from two state-owned import companies that CBV had been working with. They said the invoices indicated CBV hadn't paid value-added tax (VAT) on several pieces of equipment. Shao said his company had paid the taxes to the companies, although he could not be sure they had passed on the money to the government. The auditors confiscated CBV's books. Later the lead tax auditor offered to return the books and drop the audit if the company would post a $60,000 bond. Shao saw his offer as a thinly disguised demand for a bribe and refused. "I told him to get lost," Shao wrote a classmate some five years later. "I had set up the company's policy not to bribe any government officials in China. I am a Stanford MBA. I wasn't interested in unethical business practice. Our company had operated lawfully in China and paid all the relevant taxes. Yet corruption was so prevalent in China that our company was a rare species. It's hard to find a company that didn't evade tax and didn't bribe." A longtime "permanent resident" of the United States, the Shanghai-born entrepreneur had to return to San Francisco at the end of the month to be sworn in as an American citizen. During his absence from China, CBV's bank accounts were frozen. The records that might have proved the company's innocence were not returned. Without them it could not continue to function. Back in San Francisco, trying to get a work visa from the Chinese consulate, Shao looked on helplessly from across the Pacific as 10 of his employees quit. Shao was carrying his new American passport when he was stopped at the Shanghai airport in April 1998. He was detained in a hotel for five weeks, interrogated, sometimes through the night, he says, and then formally arrested. He was jailed for a year before going to trial and claims he was held incommunicado for the first 26 months. He says the first occasion he had to meet his attorney, whose hiring had been arranged by the American consulate, was in court. There, the prosecution presented what Shao insists was a fabricated confession, as well as a witness facing a death sentence to testify against him. (The witness was later sentenced to 12 years.) Shao was not allowed to show evidence that would exonerate him and, to his dismay, learned that one of the two import companies he suspected of keeping the VAT was owned by the Shanghai Police Bureau. On May 13, 2000, Shao was sentenced to 15 years for falsely issuing VAT invoices plus one and a half years for tax evasion, to be served consecutively. He appealed, lost, and two months later was transferred to Qing Pu, where foreign nationals are held. The American consul and Shao's older sister, Jing Li, are Jude's only conduits to the world outside Qing Pu, and they are each allowed only one 30-minute visit a month. They bring him food, magazines, and newspapers and carry out his messages. With no direct access to email or fax, Shao wrote, "My sister prints out the incoming email for me and also receives faxes at her home. She then mails them to me in a letter every few days. The Chinese government scrutinizes every letter I receive." Jing Li has made three trips to the States to update her brother's friends on his situation and recruit government officials and human rights advocates to his cause. Accounting records she salvaged from CBV's San Francisco office after the trial prove his company's innocence, Shao says. Claiming this new evidence, he petitioned the People's Supreme Court of China two years ago for a retrial. The week of the reunion word came that the court had turned him down. The Free Jude Shao Campaign gathered steam at the reunion. Classmates Chuck Hoover and Caroline Pappajohn arranged the workshop and distributed copious packets of material about the case to friends and press. They already had recruited the endorsements of several members of Congress. Representatives Zoe Lofgren, Mike Honda, and Anna Eshoo were first to write letters on Shao's behalf, and Lofgren sent a member of her staff to the reunion. Print, radio, and television journalists also were present, and in the days that followed a wire service report of the meeting was printed in newspapers across the United States and in Taiwan. An independent documentary crew is working on the campaign, gratis. Class members vowed to bombard their senators and representatives with material about the case, exhort every contact in the State Department, and make sure that no visiting delegation of Chinese officials leaves the United States without hearing of Jude Shao. The investors in the now-defunct company even discussed suing the Chinese government for putting CBV out of business. That, they reasoned, would surely attract official attention. While others press for his release, Shao spends most of his time studying Chinese law and poring over the minutiae of his case. He lives with three other prisoners in a 12-by-20-foot cell. There are steel slats on the only window and steel bars on the door. Near the door are a sink and a Chinese-style toilet. Garry Ohmert, a former cellmate who was released in February on medical parole, traveled from Colorado to attend Shao's reunion. "Jude started suffering severe bouts of depression after his father died," Ohmert reported. The death wasn't unexpected, and Shao wanted his father's last sight of him to be in civilian clothes. "Jude had to fight for over an hour to win that right," Ohmert said, "even though he was handcuffed and escorted by six officers. "Jude also has backaches, but he rises every day, puts a fireproof smile on his face, and never shows the depression he is suffering from. It's not until after lights out he lets down that facade." No matter what he suffers, Ohmert said, Shao will never confess to a crime he did not commit in order to reduce his sentence. "Jude is prepared to do every minute, every second of his time until some other way is found for him." |
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June 2008: Jude Shao, MBA '93, Released on Parole from Chinese Prison
"You've got a problem here," John Kamm told the assembled members
of the MBA Class of '93, "and the problem is Jude Shao. My impression of
Jude is this guy is one of those rare people who have principle. He really
doesn't think he did anything wrong." Dui Hua founder Kamm was formerly regional vice president of Occidental
Chemical Corp. and president of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce. "I'm a
civil rights activist now, but I still consider myself a businessman," Kamm
told the group. "I'm in something called the 'extractive' industry, and
what we're going to talk about today is what's involved in extracting Jude Shao
from this situation. "I'm often asked why American businesses should care about human rights
in China. I used to say David Chow," Kamm said, referring to a Chinese
American businessman he helped free last year. "Now I say Jude Shao. The
same arbitrary abuses of power that are used to silence dissent can also be used
for other purposes." There are three ways to win release of a prisoner in China, Kamm said. The
first is legal, and Shao has exhausted his judicial resources. The second is to
get the sentence reduced. This always involves an acknowledgment of guilt, and
Shao is adamantly opposed to that. The third is parole: for medical reasons,
good behavior, or "special circumstances." There are limits on the
first two types: They can't go into effect until a prisoner has served half his
term, and Shao has three years to go to reach the halfway mark. But, said Kamm, "under Chinese law, such as it is, time limits on parole
can be waived when there are special circumstances, which the law defines as
matters related to China's foreign affairs, foreign economic relations, defense.
In other words, if a case is politically important to the Chinese government,
they let people go. "So what do you do? You've got to make Jude Shao's case a matter of
political importance to the Chinese people. It's that simple. Every time a
delegation comes, you sit down with the head of the delegation and talk about
Jude Shao. You get your government officials. You get the media. It becomes
something on the radar screen of U.S.-China relations. And then one day some big
shot's going to go there or some big shot from there is going to come here, and
the two governments are going to discuss something called 'deliverables.' You
want Jude Shao to be a 'deliverable.'" As Kamm answered questions from Shao's classmates, he walked back and forth
before a photo of Shao, taken in happier times, projected at the front of the
room. With it was a message from Shao relayed by his sister. It said: "Dear classmates, Thank you for your support. With your help, I
believe this unfortunate incident will come to an end soon. Justice will
prevail and I shall return vindicated. Have a great reunion and fun. I miss
you all. Jude Shao" For more information about the Free Jude Shao Campaign, visit
www.freejudeshao.com.
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Campaign
to Free Jude Shao Gathers Force
