BEIJING — One of China’s leading venture capitalists was questioned by police and placed in criminal detention here Friday, part of an intensifying crackdown against political activists and government critics.
Wang Gongquan, 51, is one of the most prominent Chinese entrepreneurs to call for political reform and a leading member of a new group campaigning for citizen’s rights. He was escorted from his home in the Chinese capital by about 20 police officers just before noon, according to a fellow activist who spoke to his wife, and taken to the same detention center where another prominent activist, Xu Zhiyong, is being held, according to Xu’s lawyer said.
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The summons warrant, a copy of which was seen by The Washington Post, accused Wang of “organizing a mob to disturb public order." Under Chinese law, he can be held for up to 37 days without being formally charged.
Wang’s house was searched for approximately two hours and his computer seized, said fellow activist and columnist Chen Min, best known by his pen name Xiao Shu. The pair had drafted a petition in July calling for Xu’s release. In the petition, they vowed never to “yield in the face of despotic power.”
Wang, Chen and Xu are members of the New Citizens Movement, a social campaign that aims to promote civil society, the rule of law and limits to the unbridled power of Communist Party officials.
Earlier this year, members of the group angered authorities by unfurling banners in Beijing demanding that officials publicly declare their assets. More than a dozen members were arrested or detained. The U.S. government has added Xu to a list ofseven dissidents whose cases it has raisedwith the Chinese authorities.
Chen said the interrogation of Wang was part of a dual crackdown on both the New Citizens Movement and on opinion leaders who have used social media to criticize the government.
“The government is launching a boxing combination to punish people who dare to challenge its authority in the public,” Chen said. “It’s a very serious warning for everyone. I am prepared for the worst.”
As a promising engineering student in the early 1980s, Wang was recruited by the Communist Party and subsequently served in the propaganda department of the Jilin provincial government. But he became disillusioned after studying the history of the global communist movement and being granted access to books banned for ordinary citizens. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, he was detained by the authorities for six months because, he says, some of his friends had taken part in the demonstrations.
After his release, Wang got revenge by making his fortune, first by investing in real estate on the island of Hainan off southern China in the 1990s and then by investing in California’s Silicon Valley during the dot.com boom later that decade.
In 2004, he became a Buddhist and finally quit the Communist Party, an atheist organization that says its members should not follow any religion.
In 2002, Wang was one of the founders of CDH Investments, which has billions of dollars invested in private equity, venture capital and real estate. He quit the firm after publicly eloping with his mistress in 2011.
Another prominent businessman, 60-year-old Chinese American Charles Xue, was also detained last month and accused of soliciting a prostitute. Xue has about 12 million followers on Sina Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, and was a leading liberal voice on the Internet. As part of a new campaign against online “rumor mongers,” the country’s Supreme Court on Monday issued a ruling threatening anyone who posted libelous material on the Internet with up to three years imprisonment, especially if their posts were clicked on more than 5,000 times or re-posted more than 500 times.
On Friday, the nonprofit Human Rights Watch called that ruling a direct assault on the relative freedoms of expression generated by social media. “The government claims these new penalties focus only on malicious and libelous content, but critics of the government and whistleblowers are the real target,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch.
Under Chinese law, Wang can be held for up to 24 hours for questioning, although he may be officially detained for a longer period if police deem it necessary, said Zhang Qingfang, who is Xu Zhiyong’s lawyer. “There is still hope that Wang Gongquan will be released later,” he said. “I don't want to believe that they are that crazy.”
Wang had earlier told The Post that police had called him in “for a cup of tea” and a chat in July, but he had declined to attend, pleading prior travel plans and maintaining that his petition spoke for itself.
“To be frank, I also want to conduct a small experiment,” he said at the time. “I want to test if they come to me just to talk, or if they want to pursue me. It seems they don’t mean to arrest me yet.”
Zhang Jie contributed to this report.
