A onetime high-level missile scientist, Hua Di fled his native China after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. He always knew returning home would be risky. So before traveling to Beijing last January for a family memorial service, the 63-year-old Stanford scholar sought and received assurance from China's Ministry of State Security that everything would be okay. It wasn't. One week after his arrival, Hua, a senior research associate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, was arrested and imprisoned. He was charged with espionage -- apparently because of articles he has published in American journals on China's ballistic missile program.
Hua's colleagues at the Stanford center kept quiet about the arrest for most of last year while they worked with State Department officials to resolve the crisis. As the months passed, his supporters grew more concerned because Hua, who suffers from a rare form of cancer, wasn't being allowed to see a doctor. When news of his detention broke in October, they decided to make a public appeal for Hua's release.
Provost Condoleezza Rice pointed out that Hua's scholarship is based solely on material approved by Chinese authorities or available in Stanford's library. In fact, until his arrest, Hua's work had been well received by Chinese authorities, says John Lewis, an emeritus professor of political science who worked with Hua on a history of China's strategic weapons program: Hua was "one of three people authorized at the highest levels in China to give me material," Lewis says. "They saw it as helping China's position to be understood in the West."
Besides putting a strain on Sino-U.S. relations, Hua's arrest may upset Stanford's plans to open a study center in Beijing. While the long-awaited Chinese program would tie in neatly with President Gerhard Casper's efforts to raise Stanford's profile in Asia, Casper told the Faculty Senate in late October that Hua's arrest and continued detention "have clearly given rise to wariness on my part."
