Lai Changxing

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Lai Changxing (1958-, 赖昌星) is a Chinese businessman from Jinjiang in Fujian province. He has been described by the official Xinhua news agency as "China's most wanted fugitive".

He fled to Canada in 1999 with his wife Zeng Mingna (曾明娜) and their children. He has recently been denied refugee status in Canada. China accuses him of smuggling and seeks his deportation.

The Chinese government has been seeking the couple's extradition. It claims Lai to be the mastermind of a US$10 billion scheme, which corrupted the administration of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone in order to smuggle luxury cars and entire tanker-loads of oil into the country. It does not comment on allegations that Lai's Yuanhua group was also a conduit for clandestine military shipments, such as silkworm missiles.

Others like Pierre Lemieux defended Lai, saying he is only a criminal because of the communist economic system in China. They say with a free market, there would be no need for smugglers like Lai.

Lai's attorney Winnipeg lawyer David Matas says it is doubtful Lai could ever get a fair trial in China, given the extent of communist party influence in the opaque judicial system. Former prime minister Zhu Rongji, architect of the crackdown on Xiamen-centred smuggling, has publicly stated that Lai deserves not just one but several deaths.

Nonetheless Lai has repeatedly been denied political refugee status in Canada, most recently in 2005 September by the Supreme Court in Ottawa. This seconded the Federal court of Appeal, which in April had refused to hear Lai's appeal of the 2002 June Refugee Board decision, i.e. that Lai and Zeng didn't meet the standards to be designated as refugees.

Matas has now filed for an assessment of whether Lai's family is at risk if they are return to China. As long as immigration officials are considering this request, he says, they may not be removed from Canada.

Beijing officials have promised that Lai will not face the death penalty, a promise they must make if Ottawa is to release him. The promise is suspect, given that Lai's brother died in a Fujian labour-camp after receiving a lesser sentence, a passing noted by Svend Robinson, then New Democratic Party member of parliament for Burnaby-Douglas.

As 14 others involved in the complex racket in China have been executed, China promised Canada, which has no capital punishment, that he would not be executed if extradited from Canada.