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China sets scholar Gao Zhan free

This undated photo released in March shows Gao Zhan in Washington. PHOTO: AFP

China yesterday expelled a second US-based scholar convicted of spying and opened the door for the departure of a third ahead of fence-mending talks with the US this weekend.

Gao Zhan (高瞻) boarded a flight from Beijing and headed for Detroit two days after she was sentenced to 10 years in jail for gathering intelligence for Taiwan. China granted her medical parole for a heart condition.

Shortly after Gao's plane took off, the Chinese foreign ministry announced medical parole had been granted to Qin Guangguang (覃光廣), also sentenced to 10 years in jail on Tuesday on charges of spying for Taiwan.

With US Secretary of State Colin Powell due in Beijing this weekend, there was no immediate word on when Qin, who works for a US medical group and is a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and Stanford, would leave China.

Nor was there any word of progress on three other cases involving US citizen Wu Jianming (吳建民), held for spying for Taiwan, and permanent US residents Liu Yaping (劉亞平) and Teng Chunyan.

Liu is being detained over a business dispute and Teng is in a labor camp for her participation in the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement.

Gao's Beijing lawyer said he had been notified late on Wednesday that the sociologist at American University in Washington had been granted medical parole.

The flurry of expulsions began on Wednesday when academic Li Shaomin (李少民), an American citizen convicted of spying for Taiwan, was put on a flight to San Francisco.

Only hours after Li, a management professor at City University in Hong Kong, flew out of Beijing, Powell met Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan (唐家璇) in Hanoi, where they were attending a regional security meeting.

Washington had pushed the Chinese government -- "at every level," according to US spokesmen -- for Gao to be freed, and a senior US official accompanying Powell said Gao and Qin were discussed in the talks with Tang.

Powell is due to hold more top-level talks in Beijing on Saturday and the expulsions point to a serious attempt by China to improve relations with the US administration of President George W. Bush, which got off to a rocky start earlier this year.

Powell said he was very pleased Gao was on her way home but he has also made clear several times over the past few days that Washington is upset at such arrests.

On Wednesday, he said it was "not the individual cases that should be our greatest concern, but the whole process by which these people are detained and put on trial."
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