Father Held by Chinese Admits Spy Role to Son

Roland Shensu Loo, a Chinese-American resident of Los Angeles who was recently sentenced to 12 years in prison in China for espionage, has confirmed official reports that he spied for the Taiwanese government, his son said Monday.

“He admitted everything,” said Jerry Loo, who visited his father at a detention center in Peking last month. “I believe he confessed way before the trial. . . . Although he’s an American citizen, he is Chinese, and in front of me he said he was sorry to his country (China) for what he’d done.”

Jerry Loo, who recently returned to Los Angeles, said he believes that his father’s espionage activities were limited and were undertaken as a favor to an old friend, Edward Yang, whom China has accused of being a Taiwanese military intelligence agent.

‘Just One of the Little People’

“He told me that this Mr. Yang was the guy who lured him into this,” Loo said. “My father is a very nice person. He’s so nice that when someone asks him to do certain things he says, ‘OK, I’ll do it for you.’ He wasn’t actually working for the Taiwanese government per se. He was just doing something for his friend. But I believe spies are like that--they use friends. I don’t know what he (Yang) told him, but he succeeded in changing my father’s mind. He was just a normal bank clerk. He was just one of the little people used in these spy things.”

Loo said that officials from the U.S. Embassy in Peking have been allowed to visit his father once a month since his arrest last December, and that he appreciates the help they have given, but he hopes that the U.S. government can do more to win his father’s release.

“There is no other person or group or country our family can ask for help,” Loo said. “I apologize to the U.S. government for what happened. But please help us.”

‘He Will Not Survive’

Loo said he believes that his father will not come out of prison alive, unless American diplomacy or Chinese mercy leads to an early release.

“He will not survive 12 years in prison,” Loo said. “He has arthritis, and he’s diabetic. It’s not something severe, but who knows? The illness may get worse. And he has severe high blood pressure. Everything is up to the mercy of the Chinese. . . . To hope they have the heart to let this old man go, because of his health and his age. It’s not that they’re not taking good care of him, but under such pressure, I don’t think he could survive.”

Loo said his father--who retired in 1984 after 11 years as a clerk with Bank of America and went to China later that year as an English teacher--is actually five years older than his legal age of 67. Many decades ago, he explained, a bureaucrat misread the handwritten birthdate, 1914, as 1919.

In an Aug. 23 report announcing Loo’s conviction and sentencing, the official New China News Agency said that, during 1984 and 1985, Loo had collected intelligence from three Chinese nationals, all of whom were also sentenced to prison on espionage charges. The three were identified as Yu Defu, 48, director of Peking’s Science and Education Film Studio; Yu’s wife Ning Nianci, 42, an engineer at the Peking Construction Engineering Institute, and a Hangzhou resident named Zhu Junyi, 43.

Last month’s newspaper and wire service reports from Peking quoted the New China News Agency as charging that Loo had been spying for a Taiwanese intelligence operation directed by a University of California professor named Yang Peng, whose American name, the agency said, is Edward Yang. The news agency said Yang had worked as a spy in China in the 1940s, and immigrated to the United States in 1980.

Yang, however, apparently has never taught in the University of California system. Computer searches of payroll records and directories at all UC campuses showed two people who were paid under the name Edward Yang since 1980--an undergraduate student and a guest lecturer--but neither was old enough to be the Yang referred to by the news agency. The names Yang Peng or Peng Yang did not appear.

Jerry Loo said he never knew what kind of work Edward Yang did, but he had no reason to think he was a professor.

Loo said his father served in the Nationalist Chinese air force in the 1940s. His parents fled to Taiwan to escape the 1949 Communist revolution, then moved to Tokyo in the early 1950s. The family immigrated to the United States in 1972, he said.

In 1980, his father made his first trip back to China, visiting his home village, Jerry Loo said. After teaching English and traveling in China during 1984 and early 1985, Roland Loo returned to Los Angeles in the summer of 1985 to visit his family. He re-entered China later in the year, and the family received word of his arrest in mid-December, the younger Loo said.

A few days after the New China News Agency first announced Roland Loo’s conviction and sentencing, the Chinese magazine “Outlook” carried an article giving additional details about his alleged activities.

After arriving in Peking on June 28, 1984, Loo was met by Ning, according to the article. On his earlier trip, Loo had helped re-establish contact between members of Ning’s family in the United States and China. Ning allegedly told Loo that she wanted to emigrate, urged him to adopt her son, and in April, 1985, at Loo’s request, secretly copied government documents and gave them to him.

In October, 1985, Loo entered China again from Japan and tried to recruit Ning as a full-time agent, the magazine article charged. Ning agreed, on condition that Loo get her son out of China. He was arrested Dec. 12 at Shanghai airport, the article said.

Chuck Redman, a State Department spokesman in Washington, said Monday the United States “will do everything we can” to help Roland Loo, but “Americans arrested abroad are subject to the laws and judicial system of the host country.”

Whether to release Roland Loo early “is a Chinese decision,” Redman said.

Richard Baum, a UCLA professor of political science specializing in Chinese government and politics, said that Taiwan long has had a “very effective” espionage network in China, and has been willing to make use of Chinese-Americans.

“All we see is the tip of an iceberg, and it’s hard to know what the iceberg looks like,” Baum said. “Certainly people sympathetic to Taiwan’s cause have been solicited for years. . . .”

Under the Chinese legal system, Loo may receive more lenient treatment for having confessed, Baum said.

“The principle behind Chinese criminal law is leniency for those who confess and punishment for those who don’t,” he said. “People who confess, see the error of their ways and turn over a new leaf are given leniency.”