ANALYSIS: The logic in China's academic arrests

By CNN's Jaime FlorCruz

BEIJING, China -- Beijing authorities this week formally arrested Wu Jianmin, a China-born U.S. citizen, for allegedly "collecting information that endangered state security."

In local parlance, that reads "espionage".

The 46-year-old scholar and reporter has been detained since April on suspicion of spying for Taiwan. By formally arresting Wu, Beijing now brings him closer to a formal trial.

If recent cases are any gauge, he faces a quick conviction and deportation.

China's detention of Wu and other U.S.-linked scholars over the past year strained relations with Washington and unsettled academics, who regularly visit the mainland for research and field work.

To ease tensions, China last week freed three of the scholars, smoothing a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to Beijing last weekend.

Beijing will probably calibrate the timing of Wu's trial closer to President George Bush's visit in October to maximize its propaganda effect.

Beijing's new tack has its rhyme and reason.

Good vibrations

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Just as they fought Washington tit for tat after a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet last April, they are now ready to reciprocate good vibes.

"There's now a greater convergence of views between the U.S. and China," Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan told Rodolfo Severino, the visiting secretary general of ASEAN Wednesday.

Tang told Severino that China now considers the EP-3 incident behind it and that the only issue left is that of compensation, and the differences are narrowing.

Sino-US relations are clearly on the upswing.

The U.S. Trade and Development Agency on Tuesday signed an agreement with its counterpart in Beijing to restart a grant assistance program to China, marking an end to a sanction imposed on Beijing after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

The program will provide funds for technical assistance and training to boost Chinese purchases of U.S. goods and services.

Before 1989, the agency generated $467 million in U.S. exports to China. The potential of larger trade and commerce is clearly pulling the two nations closer.

In publicity and diplomatic terms, the crackdown against Chinese scholars has exacted a heavy price on Beijing.

'Siege complex'

Analysts in Beijing say it was in part driven by domestic politics, while others attribute it to China's chronic "siege" complex.

As Beijing braces up for leadership transition in the coming months, and as it deals with unemployment, social unrest and tensions with Taiwan and the U.S., their knee-jerk reaction has been "neijin waisong" (tight inside, relaxed on the surface).

"A tightening up on all fronts typically precedes important transition periods," says a Chinese journalist in Beijing.

Others say Chinese leaders of late had been quite upset about the leakage of "neibu" (internal) documents and information through the overseas Chinese networks. Some of these leaks have been published in various forms in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

This includes the publication of the "Tiananmen Papers", a detailed account of the crackdown in 1989 complied by the pseudonymous author Zhang Liang, a government official who now resides in the United States.

"It's said that (President) Jiang Zemin last year went ballistic when he learned that his 'neibu' speech was available in the Taiwan press only a few weeks after he delivered it," says a Chinese source.

Academics as scapegoats

True or not, he says, the police have been under much pressure to plug the leak, or at least snare scapegoats.

But why target China-born academics? Because these scholars are familiar with the language and terrain and are well connected, the state security agency is doubly suspicious that some of them are doing more than academic research.

Moreover, the police may see them as more vulnerable since some are permanent residents but are still Chinese citizens.

"They think the U.S. cannot really do much to legally help or protect them," says a Chinese lawyer in the mainland.

Beijing possibly has another motive: to hit back at the U.S. for demonizing China with accusations of spying in the U.S. as alleged in the congressional Cox report and the Wen Ho Lee case.

The Chinese have set up Taiwan as the bogeyman to get back at their nemesis. China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949, but Beijing still regards the island as part of its territory.

The two rivals have always actively spied on each other. By smearing Taiwan, Beijing is intimidating mainland Chinese who may be cozying up to closely to their rivals across the Strait.