Suddenly, it seems like open season on American academics in China. Only days after Beijing accused a detained U.S.-based scholar of espionage, word broke last Friday of yet another being held without charges, this time a U.S. citizen. Li Shaomin, a 44-year-old widely published professor of business and a naturalized American since 1995, left his wife and daughter at their home in Hong Kong to visit a friend across the border in the economic boomtown of Shenzhen. That was Feb. 25, and he never got there. His frantic wife, Liu Yingli, rang the U.S. consulate, which assured her that her husband...
