The mastermind behind an illegal emigration plot was sentenced last Friday to 15 years' imprisonment, reported Guangxi-based Nanguo Morning Post on Monday.
Wang Xuemin is former president of the Weiqi Institute of Guilin, a tourist city in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Weiqi is a strategic two-player board game, thought to have originated in China but popular throughout East Asia, also known as "Chinese Go."
Wang applied to the Japan-China Culture Association in April 2003 to send a team for a friendly match of weiqi. The association accepted, inviting him and 30 other people to Japan.
Wang and an accomplice, Xiao Jun, recruited 30 people in east China's Fujian Province.
He took 14 of them to Osaka via Hong Kong on November 25, but they disappeared soon after they arrived. Wang quickly returned, but the association reported the case to Japan's foreign affairs authority, which in turn reported it to Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The following investigation found that Wang and his accomplices were paid more than 800,000 yuan (US$96,385) by the emigrants, 210,000 yuan (US$25,300) of which went to Xiao and 150,000 (US$18,000) to Wang.
Xinhua News Agency reported that Xiao and his accomplices were arrested and sentenced to imprisonment on November 12. However, no details of the whereabouts of the 14 supposed weiqi players have been reported.
In another case last week in Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, 58 suspected stowaways and their "snakehead" were arrested by local police.
The bust was the biggest ever for Yunnan's border police, reported the Beijing Youth Daily.
Local police reported in October 2004, that a group of illegal emigrants was set to start off from Xiamen, Fujian, and head for Myanmar through Kunming.
Police first took the snakehead surnamed He into custody and then caught the 58 people suspected of planning the illegal emigration on November 2 after two of them arrived in Kunming by train.
The stowaways planned to go from Myanmar to Brazil before going on to the UK to look for jobs. The case is still under investigation.
(China Daily November 16, 2004)
