Wednesday April 18 5:02 AM ET
U.S. to Caution Chinese-Americans on China Police

By Paul Eckert

BEIJING (Reuters) - Amid concern over a spate of detentions of academics in China, the United States will issue a warning that some U.S.-based Chinese are vulnerable to China's secret police, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

The warning, which would stop short of an advisory to avoid travel to China, would be issued this week and target Chinese who were U.S. citizens or permanent residents, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. government would warn Chinese-American travelers that ``the Ministry of State Security seems to be singling out Chinese who have participated in events with Taiwan or have publicly criticized the Chinese government,'' the official said.

A U.S. embassy spokesman said he was not aware of any such statement.

Word of the impending warning came after more than 350 top Chinese scholars signed an open letter to President Jiang Zemin protesting against China's detention of three Chinese-born academics with American or other foreign affiliations.

It was not clear whether the protest letter had reached Jiang, who is due to return to China Thursday after a tour of Latin America.

Rights Said Violated

Vice Premier Wu Bangguo, asked about the scholars at a business forum in Beijing, said: ``If they are working legally and observing the constitution, they are protected.''

But the academics' letter, signed by leading Chinese scholars from 14 countries and Hong Kong and Taiwan, called the secretive detention of the three scholars ``a gross violation of China's criminal procedure law.''

It called on Beijing to release the scholars immediately or promptly grant them ``the genuine opportunity to defend themselves against formal charges in a court of law following international standards of due process.''

The three detained academics are Li Shaomin, a U.S. citizen teaching business at the City University of Hong Kong; Gao Zhan, a permanent U.S. resident affiliated to American University in Washington, D.C., and Xu Zerong, a Hong Kong resident who holds a Ph.D. from Britain's Oxford University.

Gao and Li were detained in February and Xu in August. The separate detentions were made public last month.

Gao has been formally arrested and accused of spying, but no charges have been made public against the other two. Gao's husband and her university have dismissed China's allegations.

Tense Time For Ties

The State Department has said it continues to raise the cases of Gao and the others with Chinese officials in Washington.

Gao's husband has worried his wife is a victim of U.S.-China friction over the U.S. spy plane which landed in southern China after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet on April 1.

The U.S. government has said the cases are separate.

China still holds the spy plane, although the 24 crew members were released last week after 11 days in detention. U.S. and Chinese officials began talks on the incident on Wednesday in
Beijing.

Later Wednesday, Beijing was expected to face down a U.S.-led effort to censure China at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

China has also imposed tough measures to keep out the Chinese language version of ``The Tiananmen Papers,'' a book which editors say presents detailed minutes of secret meetings of Communist leaders as they moved to crush pro-democracy protests in 1989.

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