A prominent Chinese journalist, who was imprisoned on spying charges that he denies, is caught in a deadlock with the authorities in Beijing after they rebuffed his request for medical parole to remove a potentially cancerous lung tumor, his son said on Thursday.
The journalist, Dong Yuyu, 64, was convicted of espionage and sentenced to seven years in prison in 2024. He was an editor for a Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper, Guangming Daily, but in past years wrote essays that called for political liberalization. He mixed with foreign journalists and diplomats, and was arrested in 2022 while dining with a Japanese diplomat in Beijing.
The standoff over Mr. Dong’s parole request reflects the often-precarious conditions facing political prisoners in China.
Mr. Dong’s son, Yifu Dong, saidthat his father suffered from an irregular heartbeat and that a doctor found a lung tumor that might be malignant. But his father believes that the main prison hospital in Beijing does not have the facilities and expertise to remove the tumor successfully and quickly test whether it is malignant, the son said by telephone from Canada, citing information passed on by family members in China.
Mr. Dong has asked for medical parole so he can receive surgery at a better-equipped hospital in Beijing, but officials have denied his request. They have instead offered to bring an outside surgeon to the prison hospital, but Mr. Dong still believes that it does not have the specialized facilities for such an operation — and feared the surgeon may not be experienced enough, Yifu Dong said. Prison officials have said Mr. Dong could be discharged from the prison hospital and sent back to his cell if he does not agree to their terms for surgery, his son added.
“They’re threatening to deny treatment if we refuse” their terms, Yifu Dong said. “It should be a pure medical and humanitarian issue, and should be a low bar for the authorities. Yet even meeting this low bar is proving to be difficult, and that’s disappointing.”
When called about Mr. Dong’s medical problems and treatment, an official at the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Prison Administration said any questions had to be sent by fax, but faxed questions to the number provided did not go through.
Mr. Dong’s arrest and conviction brought condemnation at the time from the U.S. State Department, plus international human rights and press freedom organizations. Mr. Dong’s son said that he hoped renewed attention could help lead to better medical treatment for his father.
Chinese law in theory allows for medical parole for prisoners to have “serious” illnesses treated, but rules introduced in 2023 tightened the criteria after public anger over some abuses, including doctors and officials taking bribes to grant parole.
Even before those new rules, Chinese prison administrators were reluctant to grant parole for politically sensitive prisoners, even for dire conditions, said John Kamm, founder of the Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco-based group that works for the release of dissidents, rights activists and political prisoners in China.
Mr. Kamm cited the case of Liu Xiaobo, the dissident who won the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison. Mr. Liu died in 2017, weeks after the Chinese government revealed that he had a cancer that was virtually beyond treatment. Officially, Mr. Liu had been granted medical parole, but he remained in captivity.
Still, Mr. Kamm said that Chinese officials may ultimately find a solution to the impasse with Mr. Dong because of international attention.
Mr. Dong’s heart ailment may have been caused or worsened by the conditions in the prison in Tianjin, a port city near Beijing, where he had been kept, said his son. Mr. Dong was put to work making clothes and forced to carry out political study on weekends because he refused to say he was guilty, his son said. He said the growth on the lower lobe of his father’s left lung was detected after he was hospitalized in April. A few weeks later, Mr. Dong was transferred to the prison hospital in Beijing.
In early June, prison officials gave Mr. Dong brief leave to visit an outside hospital in Beijing for a scan. “I think the results indicate that the tumor is close to malignant, but it’s still inconclusive,” Yifu Dong said.
Additional reporting by Keith Bradsher in Beijing and research by Ruoxin Zhang in Beijing.
