A Sydney-based academic doing fieldwork in China on the treatment of human rights lawyers has been accused of "endangering state security" and twice prevented from leaving the country.
Feng Chongyi, an associate professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Technology Sydney, attempted to fly out of the southern city of Guangzhou on Friday and Saturday evening but was blocked at the airport both times.
Professor Feng, who is a permanent resident of Australia but not a citizen, was set to make a third attempt to leave China on Sunday night, according to a friend.
A lawyer representing the professor told The Australian Financial Review the academic had been doing fieldwork on the plight of China's human rights lawyers in the southern province of Yunnan for the last three weeks.
The lawyer said state security police followed him from the provincial capital of Kunming to Guangzhou, where they had a three-hour "conversation" with him on Thursday about the nature of his research.
Lie detector
They then asked him to take a lie detector test to prove the veracity of his story.
The lawyer said Professor Feng sought advice on whether this was legal and, when told it was not, refused the test, then went to the airport and attempted to leave the country.
When he asked airport officials why he couldn't leave China, they said "people will be in contact with you".
The lawyer said Professor Feng was meeting with the State Security Police from Yunnan on Sunday morning.
A notice issued by the Tianjin State Security Bureau said Professor Feng had been "prevented from leaving the country for suspected endangerment of state security", according to his lawyers.
The notice was issued by the city of Tianjin as that is where Professor Feng has his hukou or household registration.
Limbo
"We are not sure how this will end," said one of the lawyers representing Professor Feng.
A friend of the professor's said; "People in this situation find themselves in a kind of limbo, where they are not officially detained but they can't leave either."
Former foreign minister Bob Carr, who is director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at UTS, said it was incumbent on Chinese authorities to quickly clarify why the professor had been prevented from leaving the country.
"I think an early statement by the Chinese police or clarification through the Australian embassy should happen as soon as possible," he said on the sidelines of the Boao Forum on China's Hainan Island.
The treatment of Professor Feng provides a stark contrast to the words and good-humoured banter of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during his four-day visit to Australia, which concluded on Sunday.
During the visit Mr Li portrayed China not only as an economic power, but also as a country which respected the rule of law and United Nations conventions.
Rule of law
"We respect the rule of law," Mr Li told a lunch at Parliament House in Canberra on Thursday.
The idea that China's leaders say one thing abroad and then its security services act with impudence at home is likely to stiffen opposition in the Senate to ratifying a long-stalled extradition treaty with Beijing.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was aware a UTS professor who is an Australian permanent resident had been prevented from leaving China, but it was not providing him with consular assistance.
"According to the Australia-China consular treaty, the Australian government is able to provide consular assistance only to Australian citizens who have entered China on their Australian passport," the spokesman said.
Amid worries Canberra has limited ability to push back against Beijing given Australia's economic reliance on China, Rory Medcalf, from the Australian National University, demurred.
"The good news is that the character of our economic ties means there are limits to the pressure China can apply without imposing sizeable costs on itself," he said in an opinion piece published in the Financial Review on Monday.
