A British businessman who disappeared from public view in China in 2018 has been sentenced to five years in prison in 2022, China’s foreign ministry said on Friday, in the first public acknowledgment of the case.
The businessman, Ian J. Stones, had lived in China since the 1970s, working for companies such as General Motors and Pfizer. For years after his disappearance, there was no public information on his whereabouts, although some in the business community privately discussed his secret detention.
A Foreign Office spokesman said Mr Stones had been convicted in 2022 of “buying and illegally providing information about an organization or person outside China”. Mr Stones’ appeal against the verdict was dismissed in September 2023, spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
Mr. Wang was answering questions from reporters at a regularly scheduled news conference after the Wall Street Journal reported on Mr. Stones’ case on Thursday.
“Chinese courts heard the trial strictly according to the law,” Mr. Wang said, adding that China “protects the legal rights of Chinese and foreign parties.”
It is unclear when Mr. Stones will be released and whether he will be given credit for time served before his conviction.
Laura Stones, Mr. Stones’ daughter, did not respond to a request for comment. But she told The Journal that Chinese authorities had not given her or British embassy staff access to legal documents in the case, nor allowed them to attend the trial.
The revelation is likely to deepen concerns among foreign companies about the risks of operating in China in an increasingly insular political climate led by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the country’s powerful security services.
China revised its already sweeping counter-espionage law last year to broaden the definition of espionage and has repeatedly warned in recent months about the dangers of interactions with foreigners. Officials also raided the offices of several American companies last year and arrested some Chinese employees.
Foreign governments have occasionally accused China of arresting foreigners as political pawns, such as in the case of two Canadians arrested in 2018 after Canada detained a prominent Chinese technology executive. An Australian businessman and writer, Yang Hengjun, is still in detention in China, and an Australian journalist, Cheng Lei, was released in October. Both had been charged with unrelated national security offenses and denied wrongdoing.
There is no official tally of the number of foreigners detained in China. Information about the charges against them is usually very limited. While governments or relatives of detained foreigners sometimes speak out about their cases, some remain silent, possibly in the hope of backroom negotiations with Beijing.
Mr Stones, who is about 70, had worked as a senior manager for General Motors Asia, helping it expand into China in the 1990s, and as China director for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. At the time of his booking, he had worked for more than a decade as a consultant advising investors on deals, regulations and disputes in China, according to his LinkedIn page, which is no longer available online.
With his many years of experience in the country and fluency in Chinese, he was well known among Western investors and executives in Beijing. On LinkedIn, Mr. Stones said that Navisino Partners, a consulting firm where he was a partner, specialized in “finding solutions to tough challenges, structuring deals, coaching, turnarounds.”
He also had ties to Chinese government agencies. had presented to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, according to a 2007 annual report by The Conference Board, a New York-based business research group where he was a senior consultant.
Mr. Stones’ length of service in China made him among the best-connected foreigners in Beijing, said Peter Humphrey, a British private investigator who met Mr. Stones in China in the late 1970s. Mr. Humphrey was detained for two years in China on charges of illegally obtaining information and was deported after his release in 2015. has said he believed his work in China was legal.
Some of the people Mr. Stones met during his early days in China became high-level officials, Mr. Humphrey said, making him a highly sought-after business person.
But by 2015, Mr Stones knew he was potentially at risk, Mr Humphrey said. The two men then met in Britain, shortly after Mr Humphrey’s release, and Mr Stones told him he had been asked to speak to state security officials and was under surveillance.
“He seemed to think he could handle it,” Mr Humphrey said. “Obviously he was wrong.”
Mr Humphrey’s account could not be independently verified.
The circumstances surrounding Mr Stones’ arrest remain unclear and it is unknown what communications have taken place between the British and Chinese governments. Britain’s Foreign Office declined to comment.
Mr Stones’ detention coincides with a period in which the British government has taken a harder line on China, often siding with critical US positions. In 2020, it banned Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications equipment company, from involvement in Britain’s new high-speed wireless network, a decision Beijing condemned.
London’s ties with Beijing have also been strained by China’s ongoing crackdown on civil rights in Hong Kong, a former British colony. Britain has also criticized China for its crackdown on Muslims in the Xinjiang region, its military pressure on Taiwan and its continued cooperation with Russia despite the war in Ukraine.
