Man of mysteries: Yang Hengjun, his spy fiction and China’s accusations of espionage

In the first chapter of Yang Hengjun’s breathless first spy novel, Fatal Weakness, his protagonist, Yang Wenfeng, is hauled in by police for questioning.

The officers are cliched in their zealotry: “You’ve spent time in America; they say people there only tell the truth when talking to their priests and their psychologists, but lie when talking to police, if they talk at all. I have to warn you, this is China, where the people tell the police and The Party the truth.”

Yang, an Australian novelist and self-declared “democracy pedlar”, has spent seven months imprisoned by China’s Ministry of State Security, an agency for which he once allegedly worked, after being arrested and accused of spying for a foreign state.

The conviction rate for those accused of a crime in China is 99%, in a criminal justice system almost entirely reliant on “confessions” obtained through long, secretive detentions.

Espionage potentially carries the death penalty.

As revealed by the Guardian, Yang has faced intense and protracted interrogations, his hands and feet shackled as he is repeatedly told he faces execution, that his country has abandoned him, his family and friends betrayed him.

In Fatal Weakness, the interrogations continue:“I let my head drop, and for the next week there are interrogations every day … I can’t keep telling them who I think I am, I have to answer each question considering who they think I really am.”