Dong YUYU
Image Credit: Courtesy of family
Writer and journalist imprisoned on espionage charges for his expression
Writer and journalist Dong Yuyu is serving a seven-year prison sentence for ‘espionage’ and has been denied regular family visits and meaningful access to legal counsel. Detained in February 2022 while meeting with a Japanese diplomat, Dong was subsequently held incommunicado for six months in conditions tantamount to enforced disappearance. His imprisonment is emblematic of the Chinese authorities’ use of national security charges to criminalise writing and journalistic work, and to silence independent expression.
A writer and journalist, Dong Yuyu remained in prison serving a seven-year sentence after he was convicted of ‘espionage’ in November 2024 (see Case Lists 2023/4-2025). His appeal was rejected by the Beijing High Court on 13 November 2025. Afterwards, through his family, he said, ’This case is not about justice. It is about silencing voices that speak freely, and it is about warning others not to engage with the outside world.’
Denied family visits and granted only limited access to legal counsel since his detention on 21 February 2022 at a hotel in Beijing while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat, who was also briefly detained, Dong was held incommunicado for the first six months in ‘residential surveillance at a designated location,’ which UN human rights experts have described as ‘tantamount to enforced disappearance’.
Dong Yuyu, born on 21 April 1962, is a writer and journalist. Prior to his arrest, he served as deputy head of the editorial department for Guangming Daily, a state-owned newspaper. In 1998, he co-edited Political China: Facing an Era of Choices for a New System, which included essays by liberal scholars about judicial independence. Dong also wrote columns for The New York Times Chinesewebsite between 2012 and 2014, including the widely circulated piece ‘我要送儿子去美国读大学 (I want to send my son to study in the United States)’. A 2017 book review he authored, ‘从国家政治的角度看文革—读麦克法夸尔的《文化大革命的起源》(Viewing the Cultural Revolution from the Perspective of National Politics),’ led to him being labelled ‘anti-Socialist’.
Dong was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2006 and has been a visiting scholar at two Japanese universities. In 2025, he received the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award and the Press Freedom Centre’s President's Award.