Subject: I Need Help

The e-mail, titled “An Innocent American Citizen Calling for Justice in China,” arrived Sept. 24, 2002.

In the five-page document, Jude Shao described a Kafkaesque nightmare of trumped-up evidence, a faked confession and a fraudulent trial on tax-evasion charges that ended with him sentenced to 16 years in a dreary Chinese prison.

“Now, after four years of being secretly persecuted, I am finally able to tell the world for the first time this story of horror and injustice,” Shao, 41, wrote from Shanghai’s Qingpu prison in the e-mail forwarded to more than 300 classmates from the Stanford Business School class of 1993.

Caroline Pappajohn, an executive with a small nonprofit in San Francisco, didn’t know Shao well. But the more she read, the angrier she became. She wasn’t alone.

Within hours, e-mails expressing outrage and concern over Shao’s plight were flying. Many offers of help, including Pappajohn’s, were channeled to Chuck Hoover, 39, a marketing executive in Los Angeles and one of Shao’s former roommates.

For months, Hoover and another classmate, Michael Smith, had been trying to figure out what to do about their friend, who had run into trouble with a trading company he operated in China. Arrested in 1998, Shao managed to send an e-mail to Hoover and Smith in December 2000, after he already had been tried, convicted and sentenced. They contacted the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai and attempted to talk to his Chinese attorney, but met with little success.

Hoover felt helpless. He knew nothing about China or its legal system. He feared that speaking out might embarrass his friend or anger the Chinese government. He knew that Shao had been warned by Chinese authorities to “be patient” and to not contact the foreign media.

“Perhaps a world-class injustice is unfolding right before your eyes,” Shao wrote Hoover shortly before the class mailing. “But I’m feeling very lonely. The only way to win the case is to go public fully. Could I ask for your help?”

Home to one of the nation’s premier business schools, Stanford’s Palo Alto campus is an adrenaline-filled idea factory for future entrepreneurs and chief executives. A decade after graduation, many of Shao’s classmates were collecting comfortable salaries and had acquired families and mortgages.

There was little reason for them to think about China as anything more than a rapidly developing country with KFC franchises, cell phones and increasingly efficient assembly lines.

Then Shao’s message landed in their inboxes.

Pappajohn, who had worked selling telecommunications software overseas, knew that China was a challenging place to do business. Even so, she said, she could not imagine anything this unjust happening.

“It’s one thing to deal with red tape and other hurdles,” said Pappajohn, 37, who helps find jobs for troubled youths. “It’s quite another to sacrifice 16 years of your life in a jail cell for holding to your business ethics and values.”

Communicating via late-night e-mails, Hoover and Pappajohn quickly figured out that their best shot was getting the U.S. government to do battle. But first, they needed a “selling document” summarizing the complex events.

“Our first thought was we needed to work this through Washington,” said Pappajohn, who had worked for Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) for three years before attending Stanford. “But it became obvious that this was a very complicated case and people needed some way of digesting it.”

Shao had done much of the work for them. Soon after arriving at Qingpu prison, he started working on his defense. He asked his sister Jingli, a doctor in Shanghai, to bring company documents and legal books on her monthly visits. For a brief time, Shao was helping prison authorities and had access to a computer to send e-mail. But after he lost those privileges, he handwrote his messages and asked his sister or U.S. consular officials to send the e-mails for him. Prison officials monitor his correspondence.

Using materials compiled by Shao, Hoover wrote a “white paper” that became the centerpiece of the campaign.

Fortuitous Timing

Shao, the fourth child of a Shanghai businessman, graduated from Shanghai’s Jiaotong University with a degree in computer science just as China was opening up its economy and sending its brightest students abroad to study. In 1986, he moved to the Boston area to learn English and got a job at Digicom Computers.

After a few years, he was accepted by Stanford. During his two years in Palo Alto, Shao became close to Hoover and half a dozen others. They played golf and went to movies and dance clubs together.

Shortly before graduation, Shao showed classmates a Power Point presentation on his plan to launch a trading company in China. The pitch was persuasive, according to Alex Muromcew, one of 16 people who invested at least $5,000 in the venture.

“Here was a guy that I knew, I liked and I trusted,” said Muromcew, 38, a fund manager in San Francisco. “I knew he was smart and he had family in Shanghai. It just seemed ... if anyone was going to succeed, he would be one of them.”

After graduation, Shao took his $1 million in seed money and launched CBV Trading Co., opening offices in San Francisco and Shanghai. He focused on medical equipment because China’s antiquated hospitals were badly in need of modernization. By 1997, Shao had 15 employees and was selling more than $100,000 of equipment to China each month.

That summer, Shanghai auditors visited his office to conduct a “special tax audit” and confiscated the company books, according to Shao. A few days later, a high-ranking auditor asked Shao for 500,000 yuan, about $60,000, to stop the investigation. Shao refused and left for the United States, where he was to be sworn in as a citizen.

Over the next 10 months, Shao took several trips to China. He met with tax officials but continued to balk at paying the funds. In April 1998, he was detained by police and taken to a secluded hotel for five weeks of questioning and then to a detention center where he was held in isolation for the next 26 months.

Someone claiming to represent the Shanghai police told Shao’s family that he would be released if they paid 300,000 yuan, or about $36,000, according to Shao. The family refused. In May 1999, authorities accused Shao of not paying taxes and creating false invoices. He was put on trial in Shanghai No. 1 People’s Intermediate Court.

Shao, who kept duplicate books in San Francisco, said he had copies of all payments made to the Chinese importers, including receipts for taxes and duties. He alleges that his Chinese partner companies, one of which was owned by the Shanghai police, pocketed the tax money he paid them and then accused him when they were caught.

China’s judicial system, once a tool for executing Communist Party policies, has improved dramatically but still has serious weaknesses, according to legal experts. Many judges lack basic legal training, leaving them vulnerable to corruption. Trials are supposed to be open but important proceedings, particularly those involving sensitive political issues or foreigners, are usually closed. Suspects have the right to an attorney but many find it difficult to hire one. Criminal attorneys fear harassment or retaliation if the case is controversial.

With the help of the U.S. Consulate, Shao hired an attorney a week before his trial but was not given a chance to speak with him before or during the proceedings. Even so, Shao said his attorney, Charles Duan, gave a spirited defense, arguing that the charges were preposterous and the evidence weak. But the prosecutor claimed that Shao confessed in solitary confinement, a charge he vehemently denies.

Nine months later, the court convicted CBV Trading of tax evasion and falsifying tax invoices and sentenced Shao to prison. Duan filed an appeal but wasn’t allowed to present documents in Shao’s defense, and it was rejected by the Shanghai High People’s Court.

In January 2002, Shao appealed to the nation’s highest judicial body, the Supreme People’s Court, but that move was also rejected. With his legal options disappearing, he turned to his Stanford friends.

Hoover and Pappajohn asked classmates to get the word out. Dozens of young attorneys, entrepreneurs and investment bankers mined their Rolodexes and called in favors. They sent e-mails and letters to congressional representatives, buttonholed Chinese legal experts at conferences and asked friends and business associates at prominent firms to send letters to top officials in China and the U.S.

“It’s like starting a business,” said Hoover, a senior executive at a Los Angeles-based online auto sales company. “What you’re trying to do is create something that gives you credibility or a step to the next thing so you can leverage that to something else.”

Shao’s story began moving beyond the Stanford network. Pappajohn, a native of Iowa, asked her uncle to take Shao’s case to his friend, Rep. James A. Leach (R-Iowa), chairman of the House International Relations subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific. Leach wrote to Chinese Ambassador Yang Jiechi. Eventually, a dozen other politicians, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), sent letters asking for Shao’s release or retrial.

A New Ally

Pappajohn also wangled an invitation to a private lunch at Stanford featuring John Kamm, a prominent human rights activist who has assisted hundreds jailed in China, most for political crimes. Some were released early, others had their sentences reduced or saw conditions improve in prison. Kamm, who submits a “prisoners list” each year to the Chinese government, agreed to look into Shao’s case.

“He could be our silver bullet in this case,” an ecstatic Pappajohn wrote Hoover that evening.

Kamm soon joined Shao’s campaign. “Looking back at the hundreds of cases I’ve been involved with, one factor stands out in the success stories: the existence of an individual or a group who make it their life’s work to secure the prisoner’s release,” said Kamm, who runs the Dui Hua Foundation in San Francisco. “The Stanford group is among the most dedicated and professional groups I’ve worked with.”

Shao is among 50 to 60 U.S. citizens being held in Chinese prisons, more than half for so-called economic crimes, according to Kamm. Nearly all the jailed businesspeople are ethnic Chinese, who, because of their language skills and cultural background, may have gotten involved in riskier ventures. Legal experts say those businesspeople are also more vulnerable to harassment by officials, who believe they are less likely than non-Asians to raise a ruckus.

Lang Anh Pham, a Silicon Valley marketing executive and Stanford graduate, understood how someone like Shao could get into trouble. Decades earlier, her family had fled the communist regime in Vietnam and built a new life in the United States. “I e-mailed Jude and said, ‘I can totally see myself in the same situation you are,’ ” she said.

Pham -- juggling a full-time job and three children -- began pitching Shao’s story to the media. Her first effort was to help organize a briefing at the class’ 10th reunion, held in May in Palo Alto. More than 100 classmates and journalists attended.

Kamm told the group the story of David Chow, a retired Los Angeles pilot and entrepreneur detained in 1994 and accused of attempted fraud. Sentenced to 15 years in jail, he was freed last September after a behind-the-scenes lobbying effort. His release occurred shortly before President Bush was to meet Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

“One day, some big shot’s going to go there or some big shot from there is going to come here, and the two governments are going to discuss something called ‘deliverables,’ ” Kamm told the Stanford group. “You want Jude Shao to be a deliverable.’”

A brainstorming session followed. Two classmates agreed to set up a Web site, www.freejudeshao.com, detailing Shao’s legal struggles. A third raised the possibility of investors filing a civil suit against the Chinese government, an avenue being explored by Muromcew and others. Others offered to translate Web site documents into Chinese.

Thanks to Pham, the reunion triggered a spate of articles on Shao’s case, several national radio segments and coverage by a local TV station. Old friends of Shao’s, as well as strangers, surfaced with offers of help.

Progress was also made on the legal front. After hearing of Shao, Jerome Cohen, a leading U.S. scholar of Chinese law, visited the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai to ask about the case.

Hoover arranged a meeting between Cohen, who teaches at New York University, and Shao’s sister.

Meanwhile, Shao worked from prison. He learned that a Beijing university reviewed cases for a fee. His family -- which already had spent thousands of dollars fighting his case -- paid $10,000 to hire a panel of six Chinese legal scholars, including a former Supreme Court judge.

In May, the panel issued a report arguing for a retrial, citing new information that cast doubt on the reliability of evidence supplied by the police. In an e-mail to Hoover, Shao said he felt “relief and vindication.” He has filed a new appeal.

Cohen called the experts’ rebuke of the conviction a “stunning development” that should give China’s Supreme Court the legal ammunition to overrule the Shanghai court.

Shortly after the panel’s report was released, Cohen visited a former student, Clark Randt, now the U.S. ambassador to China. Over dinner, the two men discussed Shao’s case.

In June, Randt spoke to the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce about the changes in China since his first visit in 1974, when the “omnipresent loudspeakers exhorted the masses to rise up against the twin evils of imperialism and capitalism.”

But the ambassador said China still had work to do, especially with its legal system. He listed a handful of Chinese prisoners that the U.S. government was trying to get released. Among them was Jude Shao.

Nine months after Shao sent his mass e-mail, the U.S. government had spoken. “It was exciting for us to finally get on the radar screen,” said Hoover, who has devoted at least 10 hours a week to Shao’s campaign.

There was more good news. Shao was told by a U.S. consular officer that the embassy in Beijing planned to file a formal inquiry. A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman would not confirm the status of the inquiry but said the government had raised Shao’s case with Chinese authorities on “numerous occasions.”

Last month, a prominent Chinese legal newspaper, Fazhi Ribao, reported that the Supreme Court planned to clear its calendar of all pending appeals by Sept. 30. A U.S. consular official told Hoover that the government hoped Shao’s case was among them.

Police and judicial officials in Shanghai have declined to comment on the case.

Since his imprisonment, Shao has suffered from high blood pressure and back problems -- the kind of health issues used in other cases to justify early release. But he has refused to go that route.

“I admire what Jude is doing,” said Cohen, his legal advisor. “The instinct of every criminal lawyer normally is to get your client out and once he’s out, then you can worry about vindicating him. But Jude doesn’t want to get out unless he’s vindicated.”

For the Stanford class of 1993, the work goes on.

“For some reason, I’m optimistic,” said Hoover, whose 3-year-old daughter, Katie, says a prayer for Shao each night. “Maybe its just delusion or naivete, but I think ultimately we will get Jude out.”

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Zhang Xiuying in The Times’ Shanghai Bureau contributed to this report.