A US geologist held and tortured by China’s state security agents was sentenced to eight years in prison yesterday for gathering data on the Chinese oil industry in a case that highlights the government’s use of vague secrets laws to restrict business information.
In pronouncing Xue Feng (薛峰) guilty of spying and collecting state secrets, the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court said his actions “endangered our country’s national security.”
The verdict said Xue received data on geological conditions of oil wells and a data base that gave the coordinates of more than 30,000 oil and gas wells belonging to China National Petroleum Corp and listed subsidiary PetroChina. That information, it said, was sold to IHS Energy, the US consultancy Xue worked for and now known as IHS.
The sentence of eight years is close to the recommended legal limit of 10 for all but extremely serious violations. Though Xue, now 45 and known as a meticulous, driven researcher, showed no emotion when the court announced the verdict, it stunned his lawyer and his sister, his only family member allowed in the courtroom.
“I can’t describe how I feel. It’s definitely unacceptable,” Xue’s sobbing wife Kang Nan (康楠) said by telephone, from their home in a Houston, Texas, suburb where she lives with their two children.
US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman attended the hearing to display Washington’s interest in the case. The US embassy issued a statement calling for Xue’s immediate release and deportation to the US.
Xue’s sentence punctuates a case that has dragged on for more than two-and-a-half years and is likely to alarm foreign businesses unsure when normal business activities elsewhere might conflict with China’s vague state security laws.
Chinese officials have wide authority to classify information as state secrets. Draft regulations released by the government in April said business secrets of major state companies qualify as state secrets.
“This is a very harsh sentence,” said John Kamm, a US human rights campaigner whom the US State Department turned to for help last year to lobby for Xue’s release.
“It’s a huge disappointment and will send very real shivers up the spines of businesses that do business in China,” he said.
Agents from China’s internal security agency detained Xue in November 2007 and tortured him, stubbing lit cigarettes into his arms in the early days of his detention.
Codefendant Li Yongbo, a manager at Beijing Licheng Zhongyou Oil Technology Development Co, was sentenced to eight years and fined 200,000 yuan (US$30,000). Xue was also fined 200,000 yuan.
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