BEIJING - Fong Fuming has spent two years in Chinese jails, accused of bribery and espionage. His lawyers say evidence shows the New Jersey engineer is innocent. His family says the 67-year-old Fong has been mistreated.
Now Fong's supporters see their best chance to win his freedom in U.S. President George W. Bush's visit to Beijing on Thursday and Friday.
China often releases prisoners in connection with high-level U.S. visits, and Fong is among a wide range of detainees whose backers appealed to Bush to press their cases.
U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat who lobbied for Fong, said last week that U.S. officials had responded "in a sensitive way," though he said he didn't know what Bush would do.
China's hope for an upbeat visit already appeared to have prompted the release Feb. 9 of a Hong Kong businessman about whom Bush had publicly expressed concern. Lai Kwong-keung had been sentenced in January to two years in prison for smuggling Bibles to a banned Chinese Christian group.
Bush said this week he will ask the Chinese government to honor a request from the Roman Catholic Church to "at least have dialogue about bishops that are interned there." Bush also said he will discuss the Dalai Lama.
Asked whether he would meet with dissidents, Bush said he wasn't sure of the details of his schedule.
U.S. officials wouldn't say whether Bush had singled out other prisoners that his administration feels should be freed.
But in an unusual public airing of cases that Washington is focusing on, the U.S. ambassador to China, Clark Randt, cited Lai and four others in a January speech in Hong Kong:
_Xu Wenli, a political activist sentenced in 1998 to 13 years in prison after co-founding the China Democracy Party. His family says he contracted hepatitis B while in prison.
_Liu Yaping, a businessman and permanent U.S. resident held in the Inner Mongolia region on unspecified charges for more than a year without formal arrest. His family says he has suffered a brain aneurysm.
_Su Zhimin, a Roman Catholic bishop in his 70s and in frail health when he was arrested in 1987.
_Jigme Sangpo, a 74-year-old Tibetan monk sentenced in 1983 to 28 years in prison on charges of distributing counterrevolutionary materials.
Other prisoners who have attracted attention abroad include Xu Zerong, an Oxford University-trained Hong Kong historian who was sentenced in January to 10 years in prison on spying charges that alarmed fellow academics.
Religious activists have appealed for China to spare the lives of Gong Shengliang, founder of a banned Christian group called the South China Church, and two followers. They were sentenced to death in December on charges of rape, assault and violating anti-cult laws.
U.S. lawmakers have asked for the release of Rebiya Kadeer, a Muslim businesswoman serving an eight-year prison term on charges of endangering national security. Arrested in 1999, she was convicted of sending newspapers to her husband, a leading critic of Chinese rule in the Muslim northwest who now lives in the United States.
Human rights activists say the style of Chinese-U.S. exchanges about prisoners has changed since 1991, when then-Secretary of State James A. Baker III submitted a list of 750 to 800 prisoners and asked for information about them.
More recently, Washington has passed along lists of several dozen "representative cases." They include prisoners from a spectrum of political, ethnic and religious activists. Others might be ill or have relatives in the United States.
"The Chinese will draw conclusions about which names are the most important to the American side," John Kamm, director of the Dui Hua Foundation, which gathers information on Chinese prisoners, said by telephone from San Francisco.
Fong, the New Jersey engineer, was among a series of Chinese-born people with U.S. ties tried last year by China on security charges.
A former engineer in China's power industry, Fong was working as a consultant to an American firm when he was detained in Beijing on Feb. 28, 2000. He has appeared twice in court to face charges of illegally obtaining 43 secret documents and paying dlrs 245,000 in bribes.
His lawyers say they have presented evidence showing Fong was really a victim of a corrupt official.
The lawyers also complain that courts have missed deadlines for handling Fong's case, and his family says he has been deprived of his glasses and hearing aid for much of his time in detention.
"It's time to bring this man home. It's the just thing to do," said Pascrell, the congressman.