2 Chinese Diplomats in Bay Area Ask FBI’s Help

A husband and wife who disappeared from the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco last week contacted the FBI for help Wednesday, apparently to decide whether they will seek political asylum, sources close to the couple said.

The couple, identified by friends as Cheng Huiming and Feng Jie, are the second set of diplomats to leave the consulate in recent days over the Chinese government crackdown on student protesters June 3-4. They worked in the consulate’s education section and are said to be hiding with students in the Bay Area.

FBI officials would neither confirm nor deny reports that the couple contacted them.

But Michael Shien, city editor of the San Francisco-based newspaper Young China Daily, said the couple definitely plans to defect because they do not want to sign student blacklists. The diplomats were scheduled to return to Beijing this week.

“They knew if they made this kind of report, the students would be in trouble,” Shien said in an interview. Xu Sike, a Stanford University graduate student who was scheduled to meet the diplomats last Friday before they called and canceled the appointment, said he also believes the couple might defect.

However, consulate spokesman Wang Shaohua denied that the two might defect and refused to confirm their names. He said a couple did leave the consulate to “stay with friends for awhile.”

Zhou Liming and Zhang Limin, two young diplomats who announced their decision to leave the consulate during a memorial service last Saturday, have met with INS officials and apparently decided not to seek political asylum, Xu said.