![]() ![]() Prior to being detained by state security at the airport in Shanghai, Harrison Li said the family had no idea anything might be amiss. ![]() “He’s been doing that for 20-plus years.” “My father would visit China a couple of times a year, for two or three weeks at a time,” Harrison Li said. China is among the largest manufacturers of solar equipment in the world.įor his export business, Li regularly traveled to the country to meet with clients, as well as to visit his extended family. A natural entrepreneur, he opened two gas stations on Long Island and also a export business, serving as a wholesale buyer and distributor of solar cells and related technologies for major US aerospace firms. Born in Shanghai in 1962, he emigrated to the US aged 27 to study, and later became an American citizen. Kai Li appeared to be an American success story. In a letter to President Donald Trump in January, multiple US lawmakers denounced Li’s “arbitrary detention” and urged Washington to do more to lobby for his release.Ĭhina’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a faxed request for comment from CNN on the case. The case, which was held behind closed doors and has not been widely publicized, revolves around supposed state secrets that Li and his lawyer argue are freely available online, as well as communications with the United States government that are routine for people doing cross-border business. The Li family maintains that the charges are trumped up and politically motivated. However when his plane landed, he was met not by his family, but state security agents – beginning a years-long ordeal that resulted, in July 2018, in him being sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage. Kai Li was born in Shanghai, and he was returning to the city for a ceremony to mark the one-year anniversary of his mother’s death. “We had no inkling anything like this was going to happen,” the younger Li said. After dropping him off, his father returned to Long Island, where he was making final preparations for his own trip to Shanghai. ![]() It was the summer of 2016, and Li was about to resume his studies at Harvard. Driving from their home in New York to Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harrison Li had no idea it would be the last time he saw his father for more than a decade. ![]()
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