5/6/04 San Gabriel Valley Tribune: House resolution in imprisoned Chinese activist welcomed by family,
    The U.S. House of Representatives passed a unanimous resolution Thursday urging China to release jailed pro-democracy activist Dr. Wang Bingzhang, a former La Puente resident.
    "We're really happy,' said Wang's daughter, Christine Wang, who still lives 
in La Puente . "Right now, we're really urging China to release my dad.'
    Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Santa Fe Springs, sponsored the resolution denouncing China for the December 2002 arrest of Wang by Chinese agents in Vietnam .
    A spokesman for a human rights group tracking Wang said the vote was the first step toward getting him released.
    "This is part of a global plan to exert significant pressure on China to release Dr. Wang,' said Timothy Cooper, executive director of Washington, D.C.- based World Rights.
    Wu Fan, a longtime friend of Wang and a pro-democracy supporter from Alhambra , said the House decision would not likely have much impact on 
Chinese officials.
    "I'm afraid,' Wu said. "The Chinese government can do whatever they want. They don't obey international law.'
    Wang supporters call the arrest a "kidnapping' and allege he was beaten by soldiers. Wang was given a life sentence after a half-day closed trial. He is now held in Shaoguan Prison in Guangdong Province , according to Amanda Molk, a Napolitano spokeswoman.
    A spokesman for the Consulate General of The People's Republic of China in Los Angeles had no comment Thursday.
    Christine Wang said the family has been forbidden to visit him for a very long time.
    Wang's family believes he is in desperate need of medical treatment for gastritis and phlebitis, as well as depression.
    "He's a political activist, not a terrorist,' Christine Wang said.
    Wang promoted the violent overthrow of the Chinese government in a pamphlet he wrote, Wu said.
    "I can say he had violent thinking, no action,' Wu said. "He wants to take down the Chinese government because they oppress the people. You have to do it through revolution.'
    Cooper said Wang only advocated violence in self-defense.
    The United Nations Arbitrary Working Group declared in 2002 that Wang's arrest was a violation of international law. Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, chairman of the Congressional Executive Committee on China , recommended in 2003 that President Bush step up diplomatic efforts to free political prisoners in China .
    The Wang family is originally from Beijing and moved to La Puente about five years ago. Wang lived with the family in La Puente for about two years before he moved to the East Coast to continue political activism.
    World Right's next step is to lobby the U.S. Senate to sign a similar resolution, Cooper said.
    "We will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to free Dr. Wang,' Cooper said.

3/21/01 Dallas Morning News: "China gives American 5-year term: Electrical engineer charged with obtaining secrets, paying bribes,"
    BEIJING A Chinese court sentenced an American electrical engineer on Thursday to five years in prison on charges of obtaining state secrets and giving bribes, the U.S. Embassy said.
    The two years that Fong Fuming has already spent in detention will be deducted from his prison term, an embassy spokesman said.
    Mr. Fong of West Orange, N.J., was acquitted by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate Court of other bribery and state secrets charges, said the spokesman, who spoke on routine condition of anonymity.
    A court official responsible for the case confirmed that a verdict had been reached but refused to disclose details.
    Mr. Fong was accused of obtaining secret documents from a state power official and giving out $245,000 in bribes. He was among a series of U.S. citizens and residents charged over the last two years with violating Chinese national security laws.
    The United States has repeatedly protested to China over the handling of Mr. Fong's case, saying that Chinese courts violated international standards by holding him for months without indicting him.
    Mr. Fong was detained Feb. 28, 2000, when he was in China to help an American power firm bid for a contract, according to his U.S. lawyer. He was indicted in September 2001.
    Mr. Fong, a former employee of the Chinese power industry, advises foreign firms on power projects in China and elsewhere in Asia. He became a U.S. citizen in 1994. Mr. Fong denied paying bribes and said that the power official who allegedly gave him secret documents was trying to extort money from him, said his U.S. attorney, Jerome Cohen.

10/23/01 Wall Street Journal: "China tries U.S. Citizen Indicted for Bribery," 
    A Chinese court put on trial a U.S. businessman long held in custody but only recently indicted for bribery.  
    Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court held a seven hour hearing yesterday in the trial of Fong Fuming, a former Chinese power-industry executive who later consulted for several U.S. companies.  Mr. Fong, who became a U.S. citizen in 1994, is accused of handing out bribes valued at nearly $30,000 to obtain 43 documents from an engineer at China's State Power Corp.  The judges called for a second hearing but set no date to consider new evidence and information raised by Mr. Fong's attorney.
    Mr. Fong's trial follows months of detention and treatment that appeared to flout China's own laws.  Police detained Mr. Fong nearly 20 months ago when he arrived in Beijing to help a client, Babcock & Wilcox Co., with its bidding for a World Bank- sponsored project, said Jerome Cohen, his American lawyer.  Police kept Mr. Fong from seeing a lawyer for a year by saying his case involved state secrets - a charge prosecutors twice rejected before finally indicting him last month.
    By then, Mr. Cohen said, authorities had already violated Chinese laws: They held Mr. Fong for five months beyond the time suspects are supposed to be released if not indicted.  Prosecutors refused to respond to a petition from Mr. Fong's family calling for his release.
    U.S. officials have repeatedly urged China to release Mr. Fong, and his case was on a list of issues President George W. Bush planned to discuss with Chinese President Jiang Zemin during their summit in Shanghai.

9/29/01 Dallas Morning News: "China Releases U.S. based Scholar Accused of Spying,"
    A Chinese-born American writer accused of spying for Taiwan "confessed to his crimes" and was expelled from the country Friday, state media said.  He was the fourth U.S.-based scholar released from custody this year in the days before a top American official's visit.
    Wu Jianmin was released from jail in southern China and "has left the country," the U.S. Embassy said.  He "appeared in generally good health," the statement said.
    Mr. Wu, 46, was taken into custody April 8.
    There was no independent confirmation that he had confessed to anything.
    He is one of several Chinese-born academics, writers and entrepreneurs with American ties detained this year.
    Many critics of China within the United States consider the arrests to be politically motivated and designed to stifle dissent.
    State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States had been talking with China about Mr. Wu's case for several months.  He did not elaborate.

9/8/01 Dallas Morning News: "American suspected of gathering secrets jailed"  
    Fuming Fong, an electrical engineer from West Orange, NJ, has been jailed for 18 months on suspicion of gathering state secrets.  Communist China did not formally indict the 66 year old naturalized American citizen.  His relatives say he is innocent of the charges, which center on technical documents he had assembled in his laptop computer in his role as a consultant to American power companies.

8/2/01 Dallas Morning News (AP): "China arrests U.S. writer on charges of espionage,"
    Wu Jianmin, who was detained in April, was formally arrested May 26 on charges of "collecting information that endangered state security".  The formal arrest virtually assures that Mr. Wu will be indicted and tried.
    China convicted three U.S. scholars on spying charges last week and then set them free on medical parole ahead of a visit by Secretary of State Colin Powell.
    One of the freed scholars, Qin Guangguang, a Chinese citizen and legal U.S. resident, left China on Wednesday.
    The other two freed scholars, Gao Zhan and Li Shaomin, left last week for the United States. Mr. Li, a U.S. citizen, later returned to Hong Kong, the largely autonomous Chinese territory where he teaches marketing.
    China alleged that the scholars spied for Taiwan.

7/26/01 Dallas Morning News (Knight Ridder): "China agrees to free U.S. residents,"
    China moved to release U.S.- based scholars in an apparent step toward improving ties.
    China expelled U.S.-based Chinese sociologist Gao Zhan, who was convicted of spying for Taiwan.
   Ms. Gao had been sentenced to 10 years. But a court agreed to consider a request for medical parole in what appeared to be an attempt by Beijing to end a growing diplomatic furor over her case.
    After conferring with Secretary of State Colin Powell, China apparently agreed to deport both Ms. Gao, an American University professor, and Qin Guangguang,
who has taught at several American universities. A day earlier, they had been sentenced to 10-year prison terms on espionage charges.
   On Wednesday, China deported Li Shaomin, a U.S. business professor who was convicted like the others of spying for Taiwan.

7/21/01 Dallas Morning News (AP): "Two U.S. residents convicted of spying on China,"
    A court sentenced two U.S. residents Tuesday to 10 years in prison on charges of spying for Taiwan, clouding hopes for improved U.S.-China ties before a visit by Secretary of State Colin Powell.
    But on Wednesday, China deported another person convicted of spying, Chinese-
born American business professor Li Shaomin, the Foreign Ministry said. China had
said it would deport Mr. Li after he was convicted earlier this month. 
   On Tuesday, after the sentencing of Gao Zhan and Qin Guangguang, Chinese-born
scholars with residency rights in the United States, the White House called for their release.
    China's detention of American residents and citizens has worried academics who travel to China for research. In April, the U.S. government infuriated Beijing by
warning Chinese-born Americans that they risked detention in China if they have been involved in activities or published writings critical of Beijing.
   Ms. Gao, 39, is a researcher at American University in Washington. She was detained Feb. 11 during a visit to China. Chinese officials also temporarily held her 5-year-old son, an American citizen, without notifying the U.S. Embassy as required by treaty.
   A three-judge panel convicted and sentenced Ms. Gao after 30 minutes of deliberation and a hearing that lasted two hours and 10 minutes, her lawyer Bai
Xuebiao said.
   Mr. Qin reportedly taught at U.S. universities and worked for a U.S. medical group in Beijing.
   "Both collected intelligence for spy agencies in Taiwan, causing a serious threat to China's national security," the official Xinhua News Agency said.
   A Chinese scholar, Qu Wei, also was sentenced Tuesday to 13 years in jail.  Mr. Qu provided secrets and intelligence to Ms. Gao and Mr. Li, who was convicted July 14 of spying for Taiwan, Xinhua reported.
   Another American citizen, Wu Jianmin, was detained April 8 on suspicion of spying for Taiwan but has not been tried. He often wrote articles on Chinese politics for
Hong Kong magazines.

7/21/01 Dallas Morning News (AP): "China Plans Trial Before Powell Visit: U.S. Based Scholar Charged with Spying,"
    A U.S.-based scholar accused by China of espionage will go on trial next week just days before Secretary of State Colin Powell arrives in Beijing for a visit aimed at improving strained relations.
   Bai Xuebiao, a lawyer for sociologist Gao Zhan, said Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court scheduled the trial to begin Tuesday. The timing suggested that China did not want Ms. Gao's case to cloud Mr. Powell's visit, his first as secretary of state.
   China's detention of Ms. Gao and other scholars and business people with U.S. links have added to tensions between Beijing and Washington. Ms. Gao, who works at American University in Washington, was detained Feb. 11 at Beijing's airport during a family trip to China.
   Her detention caused a diplomatic uproar because Chinese authorities also temporarily held her 5-year-old son, a U.S. citizen, without notifying the U.S. Embassy as required by treaty.
   If convicted of espionage, Ms. Gao could face between three years and life imprisonment.
   But Mr. Bai said he was heartened by a court's decision on July 14 to deport another scholar, Li Shaomin, convicted of spying in a case linked to Ms. Gao's.
   "It will have an effect," Ms. Bai said. "These two cases are connected. The handling of Li Shaomin reflected how seriously the court regarded the case. It wasn't extremely serious."
   Ms. Gao will be tried by the same court. But Mr. Li is a U.S. citizen, while Ms. Gao is Chinese and has only permanent residency in the United States.

7/18/01 Dallas Morning News (AP): "U.S. Scholar to Be Tried in China,"
    China has indicted a U.S.-based scholar accused of espionage and will soon try her, probably soon after a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, her family's lawyer said Wednesday.
    Gao Zhan is expected to be tried by the same Beijing court that on Saturday convicted an American business professor, Li Shaomin, of spying for Taiwan and ordered him deported.
    The two cases and the detentions in China of other scholars and businesspeople with U.S. citizenship or links to the United States have compounded recent strains in relations between Beijing and Washington. The arrests also have caused unease among scholars who regularly travel to China for research.
    A three-judge panel at Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court is expected to try Gao behind closed doors. The trial will most likely take place in the week of July 30 and ``probably right after Secretary Powell's departure from Beijing,'' said Jerome A. Cohen, a New York University law professor who is representing Gao's family in the United States.
    Human Rights in China, an organization that has been supporting Gao, said it hoped she was treated like Li.
    ``Our hope is that if she is convicted she will be ordered deported, as was Li Shaomin,'' said Xiao Qiang, executive director of the agency.
    Gao works at American University in Washington and has permanent U.S. resident status. She was detained Feb. 11 at Beijing's airport during a family trip to China.
    Her detention caused a diplomatic uproar because Chinese authorities also temporarily held her 5-year-old son, a U.S. citizen, without notifying the U.S. Embassy as required by treaty.
    State security agents claim that Gao supplied secret documents to Li, the American scholar convicted by Beijing's Intermediate Court of collecting information for a Taiwanese spy operation. Li's wife denied the accusations.
    Gao told a Chinese lawyer who met her on July 10 - in her first and only outside contact after 149 days in detention - that she had provided Li with articles about Taiwan and its relations with China that were photocopied from books and magazines, Cohen said.
    Gao knew some of the articles were meant only for limited distribution, but ``she doesn't admit that she had any reason to know that those documents were secret,'' Cohen said.
    A Chinese scholar who gave the documents to Gao also is in detention, Cohen said.
    He described the exchanges as normal scholarly activity.
    Gao and Li first met at an academic conference, and Li helped Gao seek funding from a Taiwanese academic foundation when she was pursuing a doctorate at Syracuse University, Cohen said.
    ``You have a group of academics, sociologists, who are studying these questions, who have known each other and worked together over time,'' Cohen said. ``In every field there is a lot of cooperation between people.''
    State security authorities have recommended that Gao be prosecuted under espionage clauses in China's criminal law. Conviction can bring a jail term of three years to life imprisonment, depending on how seriously judges view the case.
    There was still no word Wednesday on when China will deport Li.  But the court's decision to expel rather than jail him was seen as a possible Chinese gesture to repair ties with Washington.
    Gao, unlike Li, is not an American citizen so whether she would be deported is less certain.
    Cohen said he hoped China would release her.
    ``The court has many ways to free her and if the government wishes they can arrange for her departure,'' he said.

7/14/01 Associated Press: "China Expels American Professor,"
    China convicted an American business professor Saturday of spying for Taiwan and then ordered him deported, apparently trying to remove an irritant in relations with Washington.
   Li Shaomin's conviction came a day after Beijing was awarded the 2008 Olympics.  The timing suggested China had put off the conviction to avoid drawing attention to human rights during its intense lobbying campaign before the Olympic vote Friday in Moscow.
   Li is one of five Chinese-born intellectuals with U.S. ties accused by China over the past year of spying for rival Taiwan. Detained Feb. 25, he was the first to go on trial in the crackdown, which has spread unease among China scholars.
   President Bush made it known that the United States was pleased by Li's release.
   ``The president welcomes this action,'' said Jennifer Millerwise, a White House spokesman.
   ``This has been a matter of great concern to many people in the United States and one that we have raised at high levels with the Chinese government,'' a State Department official said. ``We continue to urge the Chinese government to promptly resolve the cases of those who have been similarly detained ... so that they may also be reunited with their families in the United States.''
   Li was convicted in a closed trial at the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court. The official Xinhua News Agency said the court had a ``large amount of confirmed evidence'' that he spied for Taiwan and damaged Chinese security, but it gave no details.
   Chinese officials said before the trial that Li had confessed. His wife denied the accusations and said has she doesn't even know which activities Beijing considered suspicious.
   The U.S. Embassy was allowed to send a diplomat to watch Li's trial but wouldn't give any details of the proceeding. A spokesman said late Saturday afternoon that Li was still in China and that the Embassy didn't know when he would be expelled or to where.
   The spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Embassy wouldn't comment on why Li was deported instead of receiving a prison term. Under Chinese law, spying can carry a sentence of three years to life in prison.
   Li, 44, went to the United States in 1982. He later became an American citizen and received a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He has lectured in China and worked as a U.N. adviser to Beijing.
   The U.S. Congress passed a resolution last month demanding Li's release. China specialists in Hong Kong issued a statement in May saying the case had left many researchers - especially those from Hong Kong - uneasy about visiting the mainland.
   Beijing has indicated in recent weeks that it wants to restore amicable relations. But four Chinese-born intellectuals with American ties - one of them a U.S. citizen - are still in Chinese custody on spying charges.
   They include Gao Zhan, a sociologist at National University in Washington. She was picked up Feb. 11 at the Beijing airport during a family trip to China.
   Gao's detention caused a diplomatic uproar because Chinese authorities also temporarily held her 5-year-old son, a U.S. citizen, without notifying the U.S. Embassy as required by treaty. Gao is a Chinese citizen but has U.S. permanent resident status.
   Gao's husband says academic contacts with Taiwan might have attracted the attention of Beijing, but he insisted she wasn't involved in espionage.
   China has regarded Taiwan as a renegade province since the two split amid civil war that ended in 1949, and the two sides actively spy on each other.
   Another detainee is Wu Jianmin, a naturalized U.S. citizen and writer from New York City who was picked up April 8 and accused of espionage.

7/6/01 Dallas Morning News: "Bush phones China president: He raises concerns about U.S. scholars detained by Beijing,"
    President Bush spoke Thursday with Chinese President Jiang Zemin for the first time, raising the plight of U.S. citizens and legal residents detained by China while urging that the two countries strengthen cooperation in trade and other areas.
    Earlier, Chinese officials confirmed that trials had begun for two detained scholars on charges of spying for Taiwan.  U.S. officials said they had few details about the proceedings against American University researcher Gao Zhan, a permanent U.S. resident, and Hong Kong business professor Li Shaomin, a U.S. citizen.
    In his conversation with Mr. Jiang, Mr. Bush broached the topic of detained scholars without discussing specific cases, according to administration officials.  At the same time, Mr. Bush impressed upon Mr. Jiang his wish to strengthen cooperation between the two countries.
    Mr. Bush also told the Chinese president that he was looking forward to his scheduled visit to China in October.

7/3/01 Wall Street Journal: "Passport to Freedom,"
    As we prepare to celebrate this Fourth of July, the meaning of American citizenship is right now under siege in a Chinese jail.  We are speaking of Li Shaomin, arrested in China back in February; absent due course of justice, he now faces a show trial that could lead to years in the Chinese gulag.
    In many ways, Mr. Li symbolizes what it means to be an American.  We are a nation made great by immigrants.  Mr. Li is one.  Born in China in 1956, he came to the U.S. in the 1980s to study sociology, eventually earning a Ph.D. in Princeton.  His wife, Liu Yingli, also born in China, joined him in this country.  In Feb. 1995, together, they took the oath of U.S. citizenship, renouncing all loyalty to any other nation.  It was an exhilarating moment, recalls Ms. Liu: "Finally, we were in the free world, for real."
    He was working with AT&T in New Jersey and she for Rutgers University.  Then in 1996 Mr. Li took a teaching job at a university in Hong Kong; two years later his wife followed.  In doing this, they joined the 50 million Americans now holding valid U.S. passports in order to travel and work abroad.  Mr. Li's main field of study is China's demographics, and in a climate of growing commercial and scholarly exchanges between the U.S. and China, he went there often.  And as a U.S. citizen, he traveled on the same blue passport that we all carry and depend upon to ensure safe passage when we visit other lands.
    It was with that blue passport that Mr. Li, on Feb. 25, entered China at the border crossing with Hong Kong.  Chinese state security agents picked him up and sent him to a prison in Beijing, just one victim of what has recently become a pattern in China of arrests of U.S.-based scholars.  These prisoners include another U.S. citizen, Wu Jianmin, and two U.S. permanent residents, Gao Zhan and Qin Guangguang.   
    China has formally charged Mr. Li with spying for Taiwan.  China has produced no evidence, and has cut off Mr. Li from almost all outside contact.  Mr. Li has probably become a pawn in the politics of China's decaying Communist regime.
    Mr. Li's nine-year-old daughter Diana (also of course a U.S. citizen) wrote to President Bush  in April, asking his help to rescue her father.  By letter dated June 19, President Bush wrote "we are very concerned" and that the Administration had asked China's government to release Mr. Li "on humanitarian grounds so that he may be reunited with his family."
    Certainly there are humanitarian issues involved in the anguish of Mr. Li and his family.  But perhaps something more than "concern" is warranted.  The deeper principle here is that Mr. Li is, quite simply, an American.  Indeed we wonder if Mr. Li would rank much higher on the White House priority list were he, say, a white American grabbed off the streets in China.
    We cannot allow China's disrespect of Mr. Li's American citizenship to stand.  In today's global concourse of both goods and ideas, one of the pillars of wealth and progress is the prerogative of Americans to travel on their passport abroad with the assurance that if we observe reasonable norms of conduct, our country will do all in its power to ensure that we receive "all lawful aid and protection."
    Anything President Bush does or does not do will send a message about how America views the case of Mr. Li.  In defending our own freedoms, we also uphold the universal values that are the best hope for a better world for all.
    When the people of China had a fleeting chance 12 years ago to speak out, during the Tiananmen protests of 1989, they built their own statues of liberty, modeled on ours - in Shanghai and in the heart of Beijing.  The Chinese government destroyed them.  Our own Statue of Liberty still lifts her torch, not far from the Newark, New Jersey, government office where Mr. Li six years ago became a citizen.  If we are to honor what that stands for, it is vital that this message include a clear reminder of the true meaning and high value of Li Shaomin's U.S. citizenship.    


6/25/01 Dallas Morning News: "Chinese Should Release Our People,"
    At a hearing by the House International Relations Committee, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs testified that Communist China has imprisoned more than 30 U.S. citizens and an unknown number of U.S. permanent residents.
    Among those in custody are several Chinese-born scholars.  Most were detained earlier this year, though they weren't told why.  Formal charges - typically espionage - subsequently are alleged without any evidence.
    Consider the case of Li Shaomin, who was born in Beijing in 1956.  He moved to the U.S. with his wife in the 1980s and earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton in 1988.  His father, a Communist Party official with a tendency to think for himself, was purged and even briefly imprisoned for supporting the pro-democracy movement that culminated in the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.  That event and the birth of the couple's daughter in 1992 compelled Mr. Li and his wife, Liu Yingli, to become U.S. citizens.  Mr. Li published "How China Can Learn from Taiwan's Experience," in the Wall Street Journal.
    Since 1996, both have been on the faculty of the City University of Hong Kong.  On Feb. 25, Mr. Li left Hong Kong for the nearby mainland city of Shenzhen to visit a friend.  He was to return the next day.  Four days passed before Mrs. Liu learned from U.S. diplomats about her husband's detention.  Not until May was he charged with "espionage" on behalf of Taiwan.  No evidence can be offered, because the accusation is bogus.  Last week, Mr. Li was formally indicted.

6/21/01 Wall Street Journal: "A New China Crisis,"
    One after another, China is jailing U.S.-based scholars.  Two are U.S. citizens: Li Shaomin and Wu Jianmin.  Two are U.S. permanent residents: Gao Zhan and Qin Guangguang.  All have vanished into China's Ministry of State Security.  In custody, they are cut off from contact with their families and denied access to lawyers, while China conducts secret investigations into their alleged "espionage".
    Ms. Gao, a U.S. resident hustled out of Beijing airport by China's secret police on February 11, has not been heard from since.
    Mr. Li, a U.S. citizen detained as he crossed into China on February 25, receives visits by only a U.S. consular official once a month.  A few weeks ago, China's authorities said Mr. Li had "confessed."  Because China routinely tortures prisoners, this raises the disturbing question of what his jailers did to obtain this "confession."  On Monday, China indicted Mr. Li on charges of spying for Taiwan.  The penalties range from many years in prison to execution.
    China has no system of justice.  Last year's State Department report on human rights in China noted that in practice "the [Communist] Party and the Government direct verdicts in many high-profile political cases."
    Beijing's regime brutalizes Americans, humiliates the U.S. and pays no price.  In letting this continue, the U.S. undercuts its own credibility.
    Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) chaired a hearing on Tuesday before the House International Relations Committee.  Both Ms. Liu and Mr. Xue, spouses of the prisoners, testified, along with experts who made clear that little is being done to help the prisoners.  Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) has introduced a bill in the House calling on the president to send a special envoy to Beijing immediately to "reiterate deep concern." 
    President Bush should oppose China's bid to host the 2008 Olympics.  The International Olympic Committee vote is coming up July 13.  He should also cancel the October meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation council in Shanghai.