Academic future uncertain for 'spy' scholar Li

HONG KONG, China -- A Hong Kong University will decide Friday whether U.S. scholar Li Shaomin, convicted by China for spying, can keep his teaching post.

City University's decision is seen as a test of Hong Kong's autonomy after its reunion with China in 1997.

Li was detained in China in February and convicted of spying for Taiwan on July 14 in a case with connections to other convicted U.S.-based scholars Gao Zhan and Qin Guangguang.

He was expelled several days later and returned with his family to Hong Kong on Monday.

Li had said he hoped to return to his post as associate professor of marketing.

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"I will pick up from where I left and continue to do my research and teaching right now at City University and continue to do what I do the best," Li told reporters outside the university staff quarters.

"After five months in detention, I am happy to be back to a place of freedom," he said.

Test of autonomy

There has been overwhelming support from staff and students for Li to be allowed to return to his post, but some academics are questioning if his conviction is enough justification to dismiss him.

Zhu Guobin, assistant law professor at the university, was quoted by a newspaper on Friday as saying that although the conviction and deportation order was not applicable in Hong Kong, Li had still been convicted of a crime.

City University President Chang Hsin-kang, part of the executive committee, pledged on Thursday to be fair.

The Hong Kong government has made little public comment on Li's return to the territory other than to say it would "not allow anybody in Hong Kong to undertake espionage activities and jeopardize the interests of Hong Kong and the state."

The government won praise from human rights groups, academics and the media, saying it affirmed the territory's high degree of autonomy within communist China.

Under the terms of the handover from British colonial rule Hong Kong has special legal status under Chinese rule in accordance with the so-called "one country-two systems" principle.

Outrage

City University officials say Li remains on staff

Many pro-Beijing figures were outraged over the decision to allow Li back into the Special Administrative Region.

The territory's pro-Beijing legislators had appealed to the local government not to let Li into Hong Kong and are calling for quick enactment of an anti-subversion law to make sedition against mainland China a crime.

Ma Lik, a Hong Kong delagate to China's National People's Congress opposed Li's return to his university.

"Should a government-subsidized institution be allowed to use public money to employ a convicted spy," Ma asked.

But other local politicians are saying the refusal of Li's reappointment would be too damaging to the territory's image.

"In this whole case what is sadly missing is the voice of the vice chancellor of the university defending Li Shaomin's rights, defending academic research," said independent legislator Margaret Ng.

Focus on Beijing

"Everybody is looking to Beijing. If Beijing allows we have our freedom. If Beijing doesn't, then nobody in Hong Kong would dare stand up to defend an academic who is convicted of espionage."

Ng and other pro-democracy legislators had voiced their concern that Hong Kong government would bar Li's entry.

"The price, political price of not allowing Li to come back would be too great, nobody would have any faith in one country two systems, it would seriously affect academic research in Hong Kong. For all these reasons it might be the right thing to let him back," says Ng.

Rights groups and pro-democracy legislators say that in the four years since the handover, Hong Kong's legal autonomy has been compromised on several occasions with the territory's leaders coming under increasing pressure from Beijing to toe the mainland line.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.