Los Angeles Times - Friday, September 6, 2002
Henry Chu

Wan Yanhai, a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California in 1997, has been instrumental in publicizing China's growing AIDS crisis, an issue about which the Chinese government remains extremely sensitive.

Although Wan has been active in AIDS work for a decade, he has most recently come under scrutiny by authorities for his role in uncovering details of the thousands of peasants in central China who contracted the virus that causes AIDS through the practice of selling blood. Officials have tried to suppress news of the growing epidemic.

Wan, who divides his time between China and Los Angeles, had been missing since Aug. 24 after attending a screening of a gay-themed movie at a Beijing bar. His friends and relatives have had no word of him since and have been pressing police to take action on his disappearance or to reveal his detention.

The New York-based group Human Rights in China said Thursday that a friend of Wan was informed of his detention by the Ministry of State Security. The group said Wan was being held for investigation into whether he leaked classified information during the course of his work.

In China, the definition of "state secrets" is broad and can be applied to almost anything -- even already-published statistics about HIV infection rates.

The law regulating such "secrets" is often used by the authorities to clamp down on dissidents.

"I know my husband," Wan's wife, Su Zhaosheng, who lives in Los Angeles, said in a statement released by the rights group. "Wan would not engage in any activity that is harmful to the country and its people."

Wan has earned recognition from around the world for his efforts to promote AIDS awareness and prevention. This month he was scheduled to receive an award in Canada for his work.

His detention comes at a sensitive time for China on both the domestic and international front. In two months, the country is to hold its quinquennial Communist Party congress, at which a major transfer of the country's leadership is expected to take place. The Beijing regime is always keen to silence dissent before such events and make an outward show of unity.

Also, President Jiang Zemin is scheduled to travel next month to the U.S. to meet with President Bush for a one-day summit at the American leader's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Wan's arrest could cast a cloud over that visit. U.S. officials have already brought up his case with the Chinese authorities, as have human rights groups such as Amnesty International. USC scholars who know Wan have also expressed concern.

Wan, a former public health official, has run afoul of the Chinese government in the past. After he started an AIDS hot line in Beijing and began championing gay rights, the government kicked him out of his official post in 1994.

Since then, he has continued his work through a Web site and with other activists both inside and outside of China.

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