Shi Tao
Poet, journalist, and editor
Shi Tao (July 25, 1968-), a poet, journalist, editor and writer, was arrested in 2004 after sending an email to the editor of an overseas website summarizing instructions from the General Office of the CPC Central Committee to the newspaper where Shi was employed. He was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for “illegally providing state secrets overseas”.
This profile is part of a cooperation with Independent Chinese PEN Center. It has been written by Secretary-General Yu Zhang and was first published in From Wang Shiwei to Liu Xiaobo - Prisoners of Literary Inquisition Under Communist Rule in China (1947-2010). It’s part of our ongoing effort to support freedom of speech and human rights.
From poet to journalist
Shi Tao was born in Yanchi City in the Ningxia Hui Minority Autonomous Region, the eldest of three sons. Shi began his literary activities in middle school, establishing the Zhuxi (Bamboo Rivulet) Literary Society in 1982. He began studying political economy at East China Normal University in Shanghai in 1986, but switched to political education the following year. Active in student poetry associations, he edited three issues of a poetry journal and was elected executive director of the Shanghai Federation of College and University Poets, while publishing works in local literary journals. After graduating in 1991, Shi Tao was assigned a job teaching political science at a school for the children of employees of the Qing-An Astronavigation Equipment Corporation in Xi’an.
In September 1992, Shi Tao changed professions, becoming a journalist for Overseas Chinese Voice Times (Qiaosheng Shibao), a newspaper published by the Shaanxi Provincial Overseas Chinese Association. A series of other journalistic and editing positions followed over the next ten years.
By 2003, Shi Tao was a deputy chief editor of Taiyuan Water Daily (Taiyuan Shuibao) in Shanxi Province, and had joined the Independent Chinese PEN Center.
From editor to Internet writer
In February 2004, Shi Tao went to live in Changsha, Hunan Province, as assistant to the chief editor and head of the editorial board at Contemporary Business News (Dangdai Shangbao).
Since the late 1990s, Shi Tao had begun using pennames to publishing articles on the Internet that could not be published in the official media. As official controls over Internet communications tightened from 2000 onward, Shi Tao joined other dissidents in publishing his articles on overseas websites. On April 6, 2001, Guo Qinghai, a bank clerk in Botou City, Hebei Province, became the first person in China convicted of publishing essays on overseas websites. Guo was imprisoned for four years on charges of inciting subversion of state power for publishing and accepting payment for six essays under the penname Qingsong on the US-based website Democracy Forum. On that same day, Shi Tao posted his first essay on Democracy Forum, a short article he’d written half a year earlier entitled “Rascal Blocking the Road”, which ended with these words:
We are not Buddha, nor do we have a way. What we can do is patiently wait, wait for the Buddha to come and strike down this rascal blocking the road to China’s modernization.
From April 6, 2001, to April 20, 2004, Shi Tao published more than 100 political commentaries, essays and poems, the most prolific of all contributors to Democracy Forum. Many of his articles directly denounce the various generations of CPC leadership, from Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai to Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping, Li Peng and Jiang Zemin. He also voiced his agreement with and support for the articles by those at home and abroad who had been incriminated by their words, including Wang Ruowang, Fang Lizhi, Liu Binyan, Wei Jingsheng, Bei Dao, Su Xiaokang, Kong Jiesheng, Liu Xiaobo, Liu Di and Du Daobin. This drew special attention from the Chinese authorities.
On April 20, 2004, at a routine editorial meeting, the deputy chief editor of Dangdai Shangbao orally transmitted a notice issued by the general offices of the CPC Central Committee and State Council warning newspapers against attempts by overseas democracy activists to enter China for the upcoming 15th anniversary of the June 4th Incident, as well as attempts by “hostile elements” to engage in Internet activism or other destabilizing activities. Shi Tao took notes at the meeting, and late that evening, while still at work, he emailed a summary of the notice through his personal Yahoo email account to the editor of Democracy Forum, Cary Hung, who published the summary under the byline “198964”. It was quickly picked up by other overseas websites.
On April 22, the Beijing National Security Bureau issued a “notice to obtain evidence” to the Beijing office of Yahoo’s Hong Kong subsidiary, requesting the registration information for the Yahoo account used for “suspected illegal provision of state secrets overseas”. The Yahoo office immediately provided the requested information. As it happened, this was Shi Tao’s last day working at Dangdai Shangbao before he returned to Taiyuan, where on May 1 he began working as editor of the weekly Old News (Lao Xinwen). He also continued publishing essays and poetry on Democracy Forum, including several pieces commemorating the June 4th Massacre and another honoring the jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo.
Illegally providing state secrets overseas
On November 24, 2004, National Security police grabbed Shi Tao outside his home in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, slipping a black hood over his head. Officers of the Hunan Provincial and Taiyuan Municipal National Security police then raid his home and seized his computer, communication records and notebooks, after which he was taken into custody in Changsha. On November 26, police issued a notice to Shi Tao’s wife that he had been detained on suspicion of illegally providing state secrets overseas. Shi was formally indicted on the charge on January 23, 2005. One month later, lawyer Guo Guoting, a legal advisor to the Independent Chinese PEN Center who had publicly stated that he would provide a not-guilty defense to Shi Tao, had his law license rescinded by the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice, and the case was taken over by Guo’s colleague, Tong Wenzhong. On April 30, a closed trial at the Changsha Municipal Intermediate People’s Court delivered its verdict against Shi Tao:
The state secrets that the defendant Shi Tao illegally provided overseas have been classified “top secret” by the State Secrecy Bureau, so the circumstances of his conducts should be considered especially serious... His defense counsel argued, “Given that the defendant Shi Tao’s conducts did not result in causing extremely serious harm to national security or interests, and that his attitude in admitting guilt has been good, we ask for a leniency in his punishment”. This has been investigated and found to conform to the facts; the defense recommendation has therefore been accepted by this court. On these grounds... the verdict is as follows:
The defendant Shi Tao is found guilty of illegally providing state secrets overseas, and is sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment with an additional two years’ deprivation of political rights.
Shi Tao’s case raised widespread concern in China and abroad as a typical case of the Chinese authorities violating the basic rights of press freedom and freedom of communication. Many overseas PEN centers named Shi Tao an honorary member, and he was presented with the International Press Freedom Award of the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2005, the Vasyl Stus Freedom-to-Write Award of PEN New England in 2006, and the Golden Pen of Freedom Award of the World Association of Newspapers in 2007. In 2008, Shi Tao’s poem “June” was selected for translation into 100 languages and recitations during a PEN International Poetry Relay carried out while the Olympic Torch was transported to Beijing for the summer Olympic Games.
On May 1, 2009, US President Barack Obama issued a statement on World Press Freedom Day in which he particularly noted, “In every corner of the globe, there are journalists in jail or being actively harassed.... Emblematic examples of this distressing reality are figures like J.S. Tissainayagam in Sri Lanka, or Shi Tao and Hu Jia in China.”
Compensation from Yahoo!
During this time, international concern built up over the role of Yahoo’s Hong Kong subsidiary in providing the Chinese authorities with the IP address and location of the email containing the “state secrets”. Shi Tao’s case came to be considered a typical example of multinational companies assisting autocratic governments in violating freedom of expression and other basic human rights.
In May 2007, Shi Tao’s mother joined the wife of another imprisoned writer, Wang Xiaoning, in launching a lawsuit against Yahoo! in the United States. In October that year, the House Foreign Affairs Committee of US Congress held a hearing to investigate false information that Yahoo!’s headquarters had previously provided to Congress (maintaining that Yahoo! had not been aware of how the information requested by the Beijing authorities would be used). At the hearing, Yahoo! founder and CEO Gerry Yang apologized to the victims and their family members, and in November Yahoo! reached an out-of-court settlement in which it agreed to pay compensation to Shi Tao, Wang Xiaoning and their families and to press for their early release. Yahoo! subsequently established a Yahoo! Human Rights Fund to provide aid to Chinese writers imprisoned for expressing their views through the Internet.
While in prison, Shi Tao continued writing poems, some of which he mailed to his friends. Although suffering from gastric illness, Shi Tao was repeatedly denied medical parole. His sentence was eventually reduced by 15 months, and he was released from prison on August 23, 2013.
Bibliography
1. Shi Tao, “The File of Shi Tao”, 2001.
2. Yang Yinbo, “Crying Out for Shi Tao, Cheering On Shi Tao”, 2004.
3. “The Verdict against Shi Tao (Summary of CPC Central Committee General Office and (Sixth) State Council General Office Document No. 11 appended)”, 2005.
4. Independent Chinese PEN Center, “Hunan Provincial Higher Court Ruling on the Shi Tao Case”, 2005.
5. Liao Zenghu, “My Friend Shi Tao”, 2008.
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