A Business School graduate who has spent the last five years in a Shanghai jail is the subject of a growing advocacy campaign by his classmates, who say he is innocent.
Jude Shao, MBA ’93, was arrested in April 1998 for tax evasion and subsequently convicted during what his friends say was a sham trial. Evidence that would have exonerated him, they say, was never allowed in court, and Chinese officials have since stonewalled attempts to appeal. He is serving a 16-year sentence in Shanghai’s Qing Pu prison.
Shao, a Chinese-born American citizen, founded China Business Ventures, exporting U.S.-made medical equipment to Chinese hospitals, soon after graduating from Stanford. Chinese tax auditors began investigating the company in 1997, later alleging that he had underpaid import and sales taxes totaling more than $300,000. Shao says that he paid the taxes and has the accounting records to prove it.
Caroline Pappajohn and Chuck Hoover, both classmates of Shao, are spearheading an effort to win Shao’s release that so far has included an aggressive letter-writing campaign and lobbying in Congress. When Hoover e-mailed GSB classmates in August to mobilize support, says Pappajohn, “there must have been 100 people respond the very next day wanting to know what they could do to help.” Recently, the group enlisted the help of John Kamm, founder and chair of the Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit working to improve human rights in China. Kamm, who has intervened on behalf of many Chinese political detainees, was able to have Shao placed on a “prisoner list,” considered an important first step toward bringing attention to his case and having his sentence reduced.
Pappajohn is worried about Shao’s health and mental well-being. “He is incredibly depressed,” she says. “He only gets one visit a month from his sister [Jing Li] and the consul general [Doug Spellman]. I’m not sure he’s even been able to hug anybody since he went to jail.”
