“There has been progress in certain areas, but there’s been fairly disheartening backsliding in the last few months,” he said.

But Genser said that Yang’s supporters were stepping up their “behind the scenes” efforts in Washington, encouraging officials to write confidentially to Beijing on Yang’s behalf regardless of such obstacles.

“You can’t really choose your timing in these things,” he said.

And Genser added that Yang had not been fazed by his treatment in the last year.

“His spirits are high and he’s looking forward to having his day in court, despite the fact that it’s taken 13 months of incommunicado detention as well as a couple more months of waiting,” he said.

Genser said any legal defense strategies were hampered by the Chinese government’s insistence on treating Yang’s case as an internal matter involving state secrets.

And once the trial gets underway, he said, anything could happen—and a trial of a sort which generally comes to a quick conclusion could drag on for months before a verdict is released, denying Yang any resolution the indictment might seem to bring to his unsure situation.

“There is no certainty in the Chinese legal system,” said Genser. “Just because they have certain practices or laws in the books, there is no guarantee of those practices or laws being followed.”

Jamison said that the outcome is still very much unsure for Yang.

“We’ve noted throughout this case that the Chinese need to uphold standards of human rights, due process and rule of law,” he said. “We’re still waiting to see signs that they might actually do that in this case.”

Ultimately, Frank said, it is in China’s own interest to leave any shadowy precedents behind as soon as possible.

“China wants to be seen as a great nation,” he said. “It’s not becoming of them to seem so afraid of this one guy.”

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.