His wife and stepdaughter were taken away by another group of security officers.
What are the reasons Yang was arrested by the Chinese authorities? Why him? Well, he had been arrested previously by the Chinese secret police for political dissent. Yang is a well-known liberal public intellectual who is critical of the Chinese communist regime.
Yang got his bachelor of arts in politics from Fudan University in Shanghai in 1987 and resigned from his post in the Chinese government, moving to Australia in 1999, where he earned a masters in politics from University of New South Wales in 2002. He wrote a trilogy of spy novels, Fatal Weakness, Fatal Weapon and Fatal Assassination.
He was enrolled in a PhD in China studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, under my supervision in 2006, and worked with me on a Chinese newspaper, Sydney Times, at the same time, starting his journey as a liberal scholar.