It can be very risky to do things in China that are taken for granted in other countries.
在中国，有些在其他国家被认为理所应当的事情可能也会非常危险。
Kun Huang, a Chinese-born Canadian citizen, is back in Vancouver after spending two years in a Chinese jail. His crime was contributing to research that led his employer to recommend short sales of Silvercorp Metals, a silver producer that is based in Canada but does its mining in China.
出生于中国的加拿大公民黄昆在中国服刑两年后回到温哥华。他的罪名是参与了一项调查，促使他的雇主建议卖空希尔威金属矿业(Silvercorp Metals)。希尔威金属矿业是一个设在加拿大的银矿生产商，但采矿是在中国进行的。
Huang, now 37, returned to his native China in 2006 after graduating from the University of British Columbia with a degree in commerce. His parents immigrated to Vancouver in 1997, when he was 20 years old, and he became a Canadian citizen in 2002.

2006年，现年37岁的黄昆从不列颠哥伦比亚大学(University of British Columbia)毕业后，拿着一个商业学位回到中国。1997年，他的父母移民来到温哥华，他当时20岁；2002年他成了一位加拿大公民。
His job was to research Chinese companies, which were beginning to list on stock markets in the United States and Canada. He had been hired by Eos, a hedge fund run by Jon Carnes, a Canadian money manager, to “go through all the financial records in Chinese, talk to management and customers and suppliers,” he said in an interview.
他的工作就是研究正开始在美国和加拿大的股票市场上市的中国公司。他在采访中说，他曾受聘于Eos——加拿大资金经理人约翰·卡恩斯(Jon Carnes)运营的一家对冲基金，工作内容是“检查中国所有的财务记录，与管理层、顾客以及供应商交流。”
At first, Eos looked for good stocks to buy, but Carnes eventually gained a reputation for spotting Chinese frauds, which he publicized online under the name Alfred Little.
开始，Eos是找一些好股票购买，但卡恩斯最后却以发现中国的欺诈现象而闻名，他后来以阿尔弗莱德·利特尔(Alfred Little)为名把他的发现公布到了网上。
Huang had worked on some of those reports but had no run-ins with the Chinese authorities until 2011. In June of that year, he was asked to look into Silvercorp. He said he found that some Silvercorp reports to the Chinese government showed its mines were not doing as well as they were in reports that the company issued in Canada.
黄昆一直在研究其中的一些报告，但是直到2011年以前，从未与中国官方发生冲突。当年6月，他受托对希尔威进行调查。他说他发现在希尔威交给中国政府的一些报告中，公司的表现不如在加拿大发布的报告中好。
He sent associates to the Ying Mine, Silvercorp's largest operation, in Henan province, about 500 miles southwest of Beijing. They filmed trucks leaving the mine with ore and picked up samples of the ore that fell off trucks.
他让同事前往位于北京西南方向约500英里（约合800公里）的河南省的月亮沟铅锌银矿，这里是希尔威最大的一个项目。他们拍摄了载着矿石离开矿区的卡车，还捡了一些从车上掉下来的矿石样本。
In September, an Alfred Little report questioned whether Silvercorp had exaggerated the mine's production. It said the samples it had picked up had substantially less silver in each ton of rock than the company claimed and that the volume of truck traffic was too light to account for all the ore Silvercorp said it had mined.
9月，阿尔弗莱德·利特尔的一篇报告质疑希尔威是否夸大了矿区的产出。报告称，从他们捡回的矿石样本来看，每吨矿石的含银量要比公司所说的少很多，卡车运输矿石的数量太少，根本达不到希尔威所说的规模。
The company responded indignantly and demanded investigations into those who had attacked it.
公司对此做了愤怒的回应，并要求对那些攻击公司的人进行调查。
Huang was arrested on Dec. 28 when he tried to fly to Hong Kong from Beijing. A police officer from Luoyang, the city closest to the mine, warned him that if he did not cooperate he could spend four or five years in jail. The officers questioning him took frequent calls — Huang says he believes they were from Silvercorp officials — and then demanded such information as “the password to the Eos mail server.”
12月28日，黄昆在打算从北京飞往香港时被捕。来自靠近矿区的城市洛阳的一名警察警告黄昆，如果不合作，他可能会被关四到五年。对他进行质询的警察接了很多个电话——黄昆说他认为这些电话都是希尔威的管理人员打来的——随后还要求他提供“Eos邮箱服务器密码”等信息。
Within a few days, Huang was released on bail, prohibited from leaving China. But that status ended abruptly in July 2012 after a column I wrote for The New York Times appeared, quoting Carnes as saying the Luoyang police “arrested, terrorized and forbid my researchers from communicating with me or performing any further research on Chinese companies.”
数日之后，黄昆获得保释，但是被禁止离开中国。不过，2012年7月我为《纽约时报》写的一篇专栏文章发表后，情况突然发生改变。文章援引卡恩斯的话说，洛阳警察“逮捕、恐吓我的研究人员，并禁止他们与我联络或对中国公司展开进一步调查。”
Huang was rearrested, he told me, with police officers making clear that action was “directly in retaliation” for the column. He spent the next two years in the Luoyang detention center, in a 300-square-foot cell that held as many as 34 other prisoners, according to a lawsuit Huang filed this month against Silvercorp in Vancouver.
他告诉我，黄昆再次被捕，警察这次明确表示这种举动是对那篇文章的“直接报复”。根据黄昆本月在温哥华对希尔威提起的诉讼，他随后在洛阳监狱度过了接下来的两年，与多达34名其他囚犯一起被关在一个300平方英尺（约合30平方米）的牢房里。
In September, The Globe and Mail of Toronto published a long article on Huang and Silvercorp, including statements Huang had made during an interview while he was out on bail. That made the police even angrier, Huang said in his lawsuit. He was required, according to the suit, “to scrub the sick bay using his bare hands.”
9月，多伦多《环球邮报》(The Globe and Mail)发表了一篇关于黄昆和希尔威的长文，其中包括黄昆在保释期间接受采访时所做的声明。黄昆在诉讼文件中称，这进一步激怒了警方。文件称，他被要求“徒手擦洗医务室”。
Huang told me the Luoyang detention center “is the most unbearable imprisonment in China.” He has not seen most Chinese jails, of course, but he said it was much worse than the Beijing detention center, the other one he has seen.
黄昆告诉我，洛阳的监狱“是中国最令人难以忍受的监狱”。当然，他也没有见过中国的大多数监狱，不过他说这里比北京监狱糟糕很多——他也在那里待过。
Finally, in June 2013, he was charged with criminal behavior and convicted in a one-day private trial in September. He was fined 500,000 renminbi, about $80,000, and sentenced to two years in prison. He was given credit for the time he was jailed after his second arrest and was released and deported in July.
最后，到了2013年6月，他被指控有犯罪行为，并且在9月一次持续了一天的不公开审判中被定罪。他被罚款50万元人民币，并被判刑两年。他在第二次被捕后被拘留的时间也计入服刑时间。今年7月，他被释放并驱逐出境。
What was his crime? An appeals court decision that rejected his appeal said he committed “the crime of impairing business credibility and product reputation,” according to a translation of the decision provided to me by Silvercorp. He was acquitted of the second charge, that of illegal use of spy equipment — the cameras that filmed the trucks leaving the mine. He had not been the one who bought the cameras or did the filming. Nor had he written the reports, although he did provide information for them.
他犯了什么罪？一家上诉法院驳回了他的上诉。希尔威提供给我的那份裁决的翻译版本显示，他犯了“损害商业信誉、商品声誉罪”。对他的第二项指控是非法使用监控设备——拍摄卡车离开矿场的摄像机——但被判罪名不成立。摄像机既不是他买的，也不是他在拍摄。撰写报告的也不是他，尽管他提供了信息。
The appeals court ruling sounds as if simply selling stocks short is a crime under Chinese law. “This court has determined that Huang Kun clearly knew that the purpose of gaining production information and pictures of the said Chinese enterprises, as requested by Carnes, was to short the stocks,” the judges wrote.
上诉法院的裁决听上去似乎是说，按照中国的法律，仅仅是卖空股票也是一种犯罪。“本院判定，黄昆清楚地知道，卡恩斯获取产品信息和前述中国企业的照片的目的是做空相关股票，”法官写道。
Silvercorp's efforts to sue people involved in the reports in Canada and the United States have not been fruitful, but last December the British Columbia Securities Commission did file fraud charges against Carnes, saying that he published his original report in part because put options he had purchased on Silvercorp were about to expire.
在加拿大和美国，希尔威试图起诉参与了相关报告的人，但未获成功，然而去年12月不列颠哥伦比亚证券委员会(British Columbia Securities Commission)对卡恩斯提起欺诈指控，称他发表第一篇报告在一定程度上是因为购买的希尔威看跌期权即将到期。
It said he made millions of dollars on those options as a result of the report. Carnes denied the allegations, and a hearing is scheduled for this year.
该委员会称，因为该报告，他通过那些期权大赚数百万美元。卡恩斯否认了相关指控，围绕此事的听证会定于今年举行。
A Silvercorp official declined to discuss the cases with me, and the police in Luoyang did not respond to calls and faxes seeking comment.
希尔威的一名官员拒绝和我讨论相关案件，洛阳警方也未回复我请其置评的电话和传真。
Meanwhile, business has declined at Silvercorp. Last year it said there was fraud at the Ying Mine, committed by contract miners who were paid by the ton of rocks they dug out. The company said the miners had mixed in refuse to get paid more.
与此同时，希尔威业务下跌。去年，该公司称月亮沟铅锌银矿出现了欺诈行为。欺诈方是按挖出的石头吨数计酬的矿工。希尔威称，为了获得更高的报酬，那些矿工掺加了废料。
The amount of silver produced by Silvercorp fell from 5.6 million ounces in fiscal 2012, which ended in March, to 4.9 million ounces in 2013 and 3.85 million ounces in 2014, according to Chris Thompson, an analyst at Raymond James in Canada. He said production of lead, zinc and gold also declined.
加拿大雷蒙德·詹姆斯公司(Raymond James)的分析师克里斯·汤普森(Chris Thompson)表示，希尔威的银产量从3月结束的2012财年的560万盎司，跌至2013财年的490万盎司和2014财年的385万盎司。他说该公司的铅、锌和金的产量也下降了。
But the company said this month that results improved in the first quarter of fiscal 2015, which ended in June, although silver sales were lower than they were in the period a year earlier.
但希尔威本月表示，在6月结束的2015财年第一季度，公司业绩有所改善，不过银销量依然低于去年同期。
The company's stock price, which peaked at $15 in April 2011, was below $8 when the first report from Carnes was released. Now it is about $1.85. Part of that decline was caused by falling silver prices, but Silvercorp shares have underperformed those of other silver producers.
2011年4月，希尔威的股价创下15美元的最高水平。到卡恩斯公布第一份报告时，该公司股价不足8美元。如今，公司股价约为1.85美元。股价下跌部分是因为银价持续走低，但希尔威的股票表现不如其他白银生产商的股票。
Huang is still working for Eos and says he still wants to be a stock analyst. “It is what I learned in school,” he said, adding that he believes he is good at it. He won't be able to visit China while conducting his research.
黄昆依然供职于Eos，并表示自己还是想当股票分析师。“我在学校学的就是这个，”并且认为自己擅长这一行。进行研究期间，他无法前往中国。
China remains a closed society in some ways, too big for foreigners to ignore but with a language few of them can master. Many of the frauds that have come to light in recent years have involved lies that would have been obvious if documents filed with Chinese government agencies had been analyzed by underwriters, auditors and analysts involved with the companies.
在某些方面，中国依然是一个封闭的社会。对外国来说，中国大得无法忽视，但能掌握汉语的外国人却少之又少。近些年被曝光的欺诈案件中，许多都涉及一些谎言。如果和那些公司有关联的担保人、审计人员和分析师事先分析了提交给中国政府机构的文件，这些谎言就会很明显。
But China has shown more hostility to those who found the frauds than to those who committed them and has been reluctant to share information with investigators for the Securities and Exchange Commission.
但相比于欺诈方，中国对那些发现欺诈行为的人表现出了更多的敌意，并且一直不愿与美国证券交易委员会（Securities and Exchange Commission，简称SEC）的调查人员共享信息。
Carnes says seven companies he identified as frauds have been delisted in the United States. The SEC has filed fraud suits regarding three of the companies.
卡恩斯说，七家被他认为是骗子的公司已在美国上市。SEC已对其中三家公司提起了欺诈诉讼。
It may be that China's government is especially resentful of those Chinese who returned after moving overseas, as Huang did. Early this month, Yu Yingzeng, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen, was convicted, with her husband, Peter Humphrey, of violating Chinese law in investigating a former employee of GlaxoSmithKline at the request of the pharmaceutical company. She was sentenced to two years in prison, the same sentence that Huang received.
或许中国政府是特别痛恨像黄昆这样移民出去又回来的人。本月初，出生于中国的美国公民虞英和丈夫韩飞龙(Peter Humphrey)在应葛兰素史克(GlaxoSmithKline)的要求调查该制药公司的一名前雇员时，被判违反了中国的法律。和黄昆一样，虞英曾被判处两年有期徒刑。