It is wonderful that journalist Ching Cheong, imprisoned on the mainland on ludicrous, trumped up charges of spying, has been released and is back with his family.
It would be nice to think that, in this Olympic year, his release was a sign that the mainland authorities were heeding Martin Lee Chu-ming's message that China should mark the occasion by improving its human rights record.
However, one swallow does not make a summer. All other signs are that repression of free expression is as severe as ever. Vast sums of public money are spent, for example, on censoring the internet, including personal e-mails, as journalist Shi Tao learned to his cost in 2004, when Yahoo assisted in the tracing of a private e-mail he had sent to the United States. As a result, Shi was sentenced to five years in prison.
Another person who did not spend the Lunar New Year with his family is Hong Kong resident Xu Zerong (also known as David Tsui), sentenced in 2000 to 13 years for supposed theft of state secrets.
Xu is an Oxford-trained academic historian who was convicted for publishing an article about assistance by the People's Republic to the Malayan Communist Party during its war with the British in the 1950s.
The article which led to Xu being charged with theft of state secrets was re-published in full by Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor shortly after his imprisonment. It was a description of the long-disused radio station in Hunan province from which Radio Free Malaya had broadcast to Malaya, and an interview with a local person who had once worked there.