China Sentences Computer Entrepreneur for Subversion

SHANGHAI — In a case apparently meant as a warning against using cyberspace to organize or spread dissent, a software entrepreneur who had been branded China’s first “cyber-dissident” received a sentence of two years in prison Wednesday.

Lin Hai, 30, was convicted here of “inciting the overthrow of state power” for supplying 30,000 e-mail addresses to a pro-democracy Internet magazine in the United States, according to a copy of the verdict obtained by a Hong Kong-based human rights group.

During sentencing, the three-judge panel at the Shanghai Intermediate People’s Court said Lin deserved to be “punished harshly,” the report said.

The court also fined Lin $1,200 and ordered “the tools of his crime” to be confiscated: two desktop computers, one laptop, a modem and a telephone, according to the verdict.

Lin, who ran an Internet job search and marketing company, was arrested in April for sending an e-mail database to the Internet publication VIP Reference, which China considers a “hostile foreign organization.” The electronic journal of political criticism is compiled by Chinese activists in the U.S. and e-mailed back into China to an estimated 250,000 random addresses.

“There’s no regulation restricting people from providing e-mail addresses,” said Fong Hua, the technology director of the Beijing Internet Institute. “It’s a matter of business morality.”

Lin’s case coincided with a recent crackdown on dissidents who attempted to set up an opposition group, the China Democracy Party. About 30 people have been arrested or detained in the past few months, and several have been imprisoned.

But Lin’s case seems to be special in several ways. He is the first person in China to be charged with using the Internet to try to overthrow the state, and the case has been closely watched by Internet freedom groups, human rights advocates and Internet businesses for the precedents it might set.

Compared with those in other dissidents’ trials, the verdict was unusually long in coming. Other political organizers tried on the same charge have received their verdicts the same week or day as their trials, but Lin waited in custody for more than a month and a half for his sentence to be decided.

The two-year sentence is considered by some analysts to be lenient for the subversion charge, which is among the most serious in China. Three leaders of the China Democracy Party, which was nipped in the bud in the recent crackdown, received sentences of 11, 12 and 13 years after being found guilty of the same charge last month.

But Lin’s lawyers argued that he is just a businessman, not a dissident. He supplied the addresses to promote his business, they said, and he should not be punished for the content of VIP Reference.

Lin’s wife, Xu Hong, has campaigned for his release since he was detained nine months ago, sending letters to Chinese President Jiang Zemin and U.N. human rights official Mary Robinson.

“If someone is killed with a knife, should you arrest the knife maker or the murderer?” Xu wrote.