Yang Hengjun (楊恒均) was born in the Hubei Province of central China. He graduated from Fudan University in 1987 before working with the Foreign Affairs Department in Beijing. During the 1990s Yang worked in Hong Kong before re-locating to the US as a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council. He later moved to Australia and completed a Masters in Literature and a PhD in China Studies at the University of Technology Sydney.
Yang has written an espionage trilogy, published online. The novels deal with the life of a US-China double agent. He has also been an active blogger, promoting freedom and democratic change for China.
Yang holds Australian citizenship. In 2019, after a period spent living and working in the US, he travelled to Guangzhou, where he was detained by Chinese authorities. He was formally charged with espionage in August 2019.
