A US geologist convicted on Chinese state secrets charges and imprisoned in Beijing has been released and returned to the US, a human rights group said.
Xue Feng (薛峰), who was serving an eight-year sentence in Beijing No. 2 Prison, was immediately deported upon his release, the US-based Dui Hua Foundation said in a release dated Friday.
The rights group, which advocates clemency and better treatment for prisoners in China and had repeatedly raised Xue’s case with Chinese officials, said that he arrived in Houston, Texas, on Friday evening.
“Dui Hua is delighted that Dr Xue has finally been reunited with his family in America after a terrible ordeal,” the San Francisco-based group’s executive director John Kamm said in the release.
The US embassy in Beijing said in an e-mail that it was “aware of reports” that Xue had been released, but could add no more due to privacy considerations, directing reporters instead to Chinese authorities.
China’s Xinhua news agency did not immediately carry any articles on the release. A telephone number for the Beijing No. 2 Prison could not be found and the institution’s Web site had no information on Xue’s release.
Xue, a Chinese-born US citizen, was first detained in November 2007 over the purchase of a database on China’s oil industry while working for US energy and engineering consulting firm IHS.
Media contacts at IHS did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
Xue and IHS have said that they believed that the database was a commercially available product. It was classified as a state secret only after Xue had bought it, Dui Hua said.
In February 2011, a Beijing court upheld his 2010 conviction and eight-year sentence.
In November 2012, Xue received a 10-month reduction in his sentence for good behavior, Dui Hua said.
His release means that there are now no US citizens serving sentences in China on convictions of endangering state security, Dui Hua said.
The US repeatedly raised concerns over whether Xue’s rights were being protected and whether he had access to a fair trial.
Rights activists say China routinely abuses its state secrets laws, often as a means of silencing government critics.
Xue’s arrest and other cases have cast a spotlight on potential dangers of doing business in China.
Australian national Stern Hu (胡士泰), an executive with the mining giant Rio Tinto, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2010 on bribery and trade secrets charges, in a case severely criticized by Canberra.
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
RSS