Yang Hengjun received a suspended death sentence in China, but a tweak to a transcript may hint at what’s ahead

Overnight, China’s foreign ministry was busy changing the official transcript of a press conference from 2019. It was a simple change - removing records claiming Yang Hengjun was a “Chinese” citizen and replacing them with “this”. “With regard to the case you mentioned involving this citizen Yang Jun, we have no new information to provide ...,” said then-spokesperson Lu Kang in April 2019. In Mandarin, the terms “China” (Zhong Guo) and “this” (Zhe Ge) are phonetically similar, although the updated transcript doesn’t make complete sense. No longer regarding him as solely a Chinese citizen would conclude almost five years of…