My 1000 Days' Ordeal: A Spiritual Journey
Ching Cheong
Singapore: Straits Times Press, 2012
ISBN: 9789814342346

Journalists are always taught to cover the news, and not become the news. On April 21, 2005, Straits Times correspondent Ching Cheong broke that rule: he crossed the border into Shenzhen to investigate a manuscript of the memoirs of the late Chinese leader, Zhao Ziyang. That was the start of his nightmare. The next day, he was detained in isolation for more than three months, as the Public Security Bureau tried all manner of ways short of physical violence to get him to confess to spying for Taiwan. He was later "tried" in a Beijing court, his 20,000-word so-called "confession" the only evidence the State Prosecutor produced, and was summarily convicted of spying for "foreign powers" and sentenced to five years' jail.

His book re-counts in detail the emotional turmoil he felt at being "betrayed" by his desire to see China and Taiwan peacefully reunified, the tortuous circumstances under which he was compelled to write a "confession" of his alleged crime, and his struggle to come to terms with what he – albeit unwittingly – brought upon himself. He decided to write it "to contribute in a small way to wiping out the soil that produces such miscarriages of justice" in China, to make sure that he "had not gone to jail for nothing".

For the international legions of human rights activists, Ching's Ordeal describes, in very ordinary terms, how the Chinese authorities — or any other undemocratic regime — use "logic" and forms of mental torture to obtain "confessions". It shows up, without drama, the huge distance China needs to cover to become a country where the rule of law is not subject to politics. Most of all, it shows the "patriots" in the Chinese diaspora the gradient they have to walk to separate communist dictates from a culture of which there is much to be proud. Ching puts it simply: "I hope through the recounting of my story to bring attention to the situation of China's judicial system, so that we can together build a country that respects and protects the rights of a quarter of the world’s population."