A Journalist’s Perilous Flight : Chinese Writer Plans to Use New Freedom to Continue Dissent Against Homeland

Two months ago, 35-year-old Ren-Fu Yang arrived on California shores faint and filthy after days of being holed up in a smuggling vessel, drinking saltwater and eating two bowls of cold rice a day.

Friday, the slight journalist stepped outside the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles a free man, one of two Chinese nationals smuggled to California from Fujian province to win their political asylum cases this week.

Yang, whose pro-democracy writings for the Fuzhou Harbor Daily spawned a nightmare of persecution for him and his family, said he plans to use his freedom to continue writing, and hopes his persistent dissent will be heard by government officials in his homeland.

“I have to be strong,” he said through an interpreter Friday as he waited patiently for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to hand over the 4-by-5-inch document cementing his release from custody.

“Now I am a free man. And I feel I owe the citizens of China. Hopefully, my articles will have some impact on my people.”

Although his faith in what he called this “great country” is unflagging, Yang stepped out of confinement with no place to stay and little money, clutching only a soiled set of spare clothes in a Gap shopping bag.

He wears his other scant possessions: sneakers with no laces, worn gray slacks and a mustard-colored T-shirt that betrays his culture’s awe of American things. “Archery Contest. You Are the Active One the Way of You Dress,” the English inscription says.

Yang was among hundreds of immigrants seized when U.S. immigration officials boarded two fishing boats in the waters south of San Francisco on June 2.

Another of the group, Chian-Ling Tjen, 29, won his freedom Wednesday after citing persecution in China for violating that country’s one-child policy by having four children.

Immigration attorneys say the relative speed of the proceedings--Chinese immigrants with comparable cases have previously been held for nearly a year--is evidence of the Clinton Administration’s commitment to accelerate asylum cases in an effort to weed out frivolous claims and ease an overburdened system.

The two successful cases also show that claims of political persecution by Chinese nationals can still win them a life in the United States, despite official assertions that many of the immigrants steaming toward U.S. waters from Fujian province have purely economic motives.

Yang’s troubles are far from over. Although he has relatives in the New York area, he has been unable to reach them. He believes they are shunning him for fear they will be contacted by smugglers eager to collect on Yang’s promise to pay $24,000 for the hellish journey.

Foremost on Yang’s mind, however, was the fate of his wife and 10-year-old daughter, still in hiding in Fujian province.

“I think my wife is in trouble now,” Yang told his lawyer, Alan Richard Klein, who on Friday began the paperwork he believes will eventually reunite the family. The Los Angeles attorney said Yang should receive a work permit in about three weeks. Then, Yang said, he hopes to pay off his smuggling debt--he would not say to whom--with “1 1/2 years salary.”

He has no idea what kind of work he will find; many such new immigrants wind up working in restaurants. He plans to write on the side, at least, for Chinese-language publications.

Yang said he took up writing because “there was a need for it.” After the 1989 Tian An Men Square massacre, he joined groups of students in Fuzhou protesting the actions , and began slipping references to the Beijing event into his articles.

“In the beginning, I was just really expressing what I felt about how the government was treating its citizens,” Yang said. “When they started putting pressure on me, I felt I should be even stronger and keep on doing it.”

Last year, he and his family began paying for his frankness. His two brothers and a sister lost their jobs, and police ransacked his house several times.

In January, Yang was fired from his job on the grounds he was not working hard enough and he learned that he was targeted for arrest. It was then that he searched for a “snakehead,” a smuggler who arranges illicit passage out of China. He made a $1,000 down payment, and moved from house to house, staying with relatives until the boat sailed April 21, he said.

“I would have been in jail if I had stayed. My life was threatened,” he said.

Yang described the journey from China as almost deadly.

For 42 days, 349 men and women huddled below deck, perpetually seasick and increasingly dehydrated. During the final four days, they had no food or water, and many fainted, Yang said.

Although the journey was terrible and the price was steep, Yang said, exploitation by smugglers is the only choice for many. “It’s reasonable, but it’s not fair.