Like many entrepreneurs in China, Geng Xiaonan found a space in which to make a small fortune — in her case, publishing books on cooking, health and lifestyle.
But unlike many Chinese entrepreneurs, she mixed with critics of the party, organizing dinners and salons that brought together liberal intellectuals, retired officials and longtime dissenters.
Now, Ms. Geng is set to stand trial in Beijing on Tuesday and may spend years in prison for her support for those at odds with China’s deepening authoritarianism, her supporters say. She and her husband, Qin Zhen, have been charged with illegal business activities related to their publishing company. Friends and observers maintain that her real offense in the eyes of the government was straying from business into sympathizing with critics of Communist Party power.
Ms. Geng, 46, came under growing surveillance last year after she leapt to the defense of Xu Zhangrun, a law professor in Beijing who was suspended after publishing essays scathingly critical of the party and its top leader, Xi Jinping.
“This is simply political persecution,” said Cai Xia, a former professor at the Central Party School in Beijing, who said she had been friends with Ms. Geng for about eight years. Ms. Cai has moved to the United States, where she has denounced the Chinese Communist Party’s deepening authoritarianism.
“It’s a selective system of enforcement,” Ms. Cai added. “They can make up whatever they want when they want to slap a crime on you.”
Ms. Geng is the latest among a handful of Chinese entrepreneurs detained or imprisoned since last year as the party draws a harder line on businesspeople it deems challengers of Beijing’s rule.
In September, the authorities sentenced Ren Zhiqiang, a retired real estate magnate who criticized Mr. Xi’s handling of the pandemic, to 18 years in prison on charges of graft and abuse of power. In November, the police in Hebei Province, near Beijing, detained Sun Dawu, a farm goods entrepreneur who has called for economic and political liberalization and has long jousted with local officials.
Late last year, the authorities sentenced Li Huaiqing, a businessman who had shared social media messages critical of the party, to 20 years in prison for fraud, extortion and “inciting subversion of state power.”
“Nowadays, ideological things have been shattered; nobody believes in them,” Guo Yuhua, a professor at Tsinghua University who has been friends with Ms. Geng for years, said by telephone. “But now that effectively ideological rule has failed, they can also use economic punishment and crimes to convict you.”
Most Chinese businesspeople accept the party’s rule — despite complaints about taxes, fees and meddling officials — and many are party members. Only a few risk official ire by assisting or mixing with critics of the government.
But larger numbers of…
Read More: How Geng Xiaonan Ran Afoul of China’s Communist Party