Chinese Dissident Sentenced to 8 Years After He Tried to Fly to His Dying Wife

Since he first joined protests in the 1980s, Mr. Yang said in his statement, “my political credo and ideals have never changed: for China to fully realize authentic freedom, democracy, human rights and rule of law. This is the original, foundational and ultimate intention of all my social, intellectual and academic activities.”

Mr. Yang has been one of China’s most persistent opponents of authoritarian rule. He became widely known in activist circles in 2005, when he helped organize villagers in southern China to protest land seizures that they said were corrupt and unfair.

He was sentenced to prison in 2007 on charges of illegal business activities related to publishing (Mr. Yang also wrote science-fiction novels.). After his release, he resumed his political activities, and in 2013 he joined protests at the Southern Weekend newspaper in Guangzhou, where journalists had denounced tightening censorship under Mr. Xi.

Mr. Yang was sentenced to six years in prison in 2015 on charges of disturbing public order and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for his role in the newspaper protest and for supporting a campaign for China to ratify an international rights covenant.

He was detained again in January 2021 when he sought to fly to the United States, where his wife, Zhang Qing, was in the late stages of cancer. She and their two children had settled there in 2009.

“He just wanted to visit his sick wife, fearing that maybe he would never see her again in this life,” said Zan Aizong, a friend of Mr. Yang’s in eastern China who recalled meeting him in late 2021 and discussing his plans to reach the United States. “I guessed that he wouldn’t be allowed to leave, but he was very confident that he would get to see her, because this was plain humanitarianism.”

Mr. Yang went to Shanghai, hoping to take a flight to San Francisco. But airport officers told him that, as a “national security risk,” he could not board the plane, Mr. Yang said at the time. He has been held ever since. His wife died almost a year after Mr. Yang’s attempted flight.