Return to China Is Risky for U.S. Citizens

California businessman David Ji is one of thousands of Chinese Americans who have returned to China to do business in recent years. Many have found terrific opportunities in China’s booming economy and have been welcomed by government officials for their skills and investments.

But some have run into legal trouble, illustrating the personal risks that ethnic Chinese in particular may face if a business deal turns sour, according to American lawyers and human rights groups that follow China.

Ji, chairman and co-founder of Ontario-based Apex Digital Inc., has been detained for several months in a hotel in Mianyang, a city in western China. That is the home of Sichuan Changhong Electric Co., a large state-owned television manufacturer that has sued Apex, accusing it of reneging on more than $450 million in debts.

Although the 52-year-old Ji hasn’t been charged with any crime, he has been held under Chinese criminal law that allows authorities to keep a person in a form of house arrest for as long as six months.

For Ji, that six-month period will expire this weekend.

At that time, he could be released. But Ji, who was born in China and became an American citizen in 2000, also could be charged or given another kind of short-term detention.

Authorities in China have declined to comment on Ji’s situation but have told U.S. consulate officials that he had been placed in what’s called “residential surveillance” because of a commercial dispute.

Jack Auspitz, a New York lawyer who is representing Changhong in its lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, said it wasn’t Changhong that was detaining Ji. But Auspitz also said that he didn’t know whether Changhong had reported its problems with Apex to authorities in Mianyang, where Changhong is a major source of revenue and jobs.

Ji’s daughter, Jean, 26, believes her father is being held as a bargaining chip to get Apex to pay up. She has been campaigning to free him, lobbying officials in Washington and now developing a website to build more public support for her father.

“I am hopeful that somehow, someway, justice will be served,” she said early Tuesday from the family home in Rowland Heights, where she lives with her parents.

John Kamm, a prominent human rights activist in San Francisco, wasn’t familiar with the dispute but said that it was common for police in a city in China to have a special interest in such commercial disputes because of its close relations to a local company. But Kamm called Ji’s detention arbitrary under international legal standards.

“There is something called presumption of innocence and due process,” said Kamm, who runs the Dui Hua Foundation, a group that tries to arrange for the release of political prisoners in China. “Unfortunately, it’s part of a broader pattern in commercial disputes.”

A representative of the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs said about 40 U.S. citizens in China were in prison or were otherwise being detained. The bureau didn’t break down the data, but human rights activists believe that most are being held for alleged economic crimes and that many of them are ethnic Chinese.

Ji first arrived in Los Angeles in 1987 as a graduate student, while his wife and only child remained in Shanghai. At first, he worked for a business that exported scrap metal to China. In 1999, he and Ancle Hsu, a Taiwanese immigrant, founded Apex. Tapping China’s low-cost manufacturing capabilities, Apex quickly became a leader in selling cut-rate DVD players.

In 2002, Ji and Hsu were chosen as one of 15 “global influentials” by Time magazine, and in the following year their company’s sales broke $1 billion.

Apex started selling television sets in the United States in 2002, with Changhong as one of its largest suppliers. Changhong has accused Apex of repeatedly failing to make payments and bouncing checks, while Apex has claimed that Changhong shipped shoddy products.

Ji was arrested Oct. 24, 2004, in China’s southern coastal city of Shenzhen during a routine business trip, according to Jean Ji. She said her father was then sent west to Mianyang, where he has placed in residential surveillance on Nov. 29.

Although Chinese law provides for this process while authorities conduct an investigation, an attorney for Apex in Washington, Andrea Worden, said that Ji wasn’t given free access to lawyers or presented with a written detention warrant when first arrested, as required under Chinese regulations.

Jean Ji said her father was being accompanied everywhere by two to three police officers. She said she spoke with her father once in each of the last two weeks. Prior to that, she said neither she nor her mother had heard from him in more than a month.

Jean Ji said that when she last talked with her father Tuesday, he told her to refrain from a public campaign to free him.

Ji said she told him she would heed his wishes. But that’s not all she said. Before hanging up the phone, “I told him there was a reason why he has one daughter.” No matter what happens this weekend, she went on to tell him, “you won’t be left alone. I will keep fighting for you.”