After being detained in China for more than 14 months, pro-democracy activist and Kennedy School of Government graduate Yang Jianli was allowed Tuesday for the first time to meet with his lawyer, Mo Shaoping, his wife said.

Yang, who is president of the Foundation for China in the 21st Century, was visiting China with another person’s passport in April 2002 when he was seized by the authorities while trying to board a plane. Until Tuesday’s meeting, no reliable proof of Yang’s safety had emerged.

“This is really the first confirmation, so we’re really happy to find out where he is and that he’s well,” said his wife, Christina X. Fu. Fu is a researcher at Harvard Medical School.

The meeting came after renewed pressure on China from the international community. In early June, a United Nations committee declared Yang’s detention in violation of international law. And later that month, the House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning China for continuing to hold Yang.

Jared Genser, Fu’s lawyer, said he was going on to push for “a parallel resolution in the Senate” in addition to “pursuing other ways to put multilateral pressure on the Chinese government...so that China will hear the message not just from the U.S. and the U.N.”

Genser said he thought the decision by the Chinese government to allow Yang access to his lawyer was a product of such efforts.

“The pressure is serving the purpose that we hoped it would,” Genser said.

And Fu said that with the doors of communication to Yang thrown open, it did not appear they would close soon.

“We have access now,” she said. “Basically any time [the lawyer] wants to meet my husband again, all he has to do is submit an application.”

Still, Genser said, the good news would not make him or Fu complacent in their struggle to free Yang.

“It reaffirms for me the urgency of the Chinese government releasing him unconditionally as early as may be possible,” he said. “The reality is that while the Chinese government may think that allowing his lawyer access to him may lessen the pressure on this case, the fundamental realities of the case have not changed.”

Those realities include the ban on any direct contact between Yang and his family, which still stands.

But Fu said she thought the end was in sight.

Yang’s case will transfer to a court in six weeks, she said, and he will be sentenced another six weeks after that.

As early as August, Fu said, the public would know what charges Yang was facing.